[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome in to Think Deeper podcast, presented by Focus Press. This is Jack Wilkie, joined by Joe Wilkie and Will Harab.
And I don't really have anything to tell you about to begin with this week, so we're just going to get right into the topic. Sometimes we like kind of doing a hodgepodge look at the news, but interestingly, we were looking at some of the things in the news, and I think there's some overlap there. There's some. I already used the word interesting. There's some strange headlines going around.
Some changes are being made, I guess is a way to put it. And as we talked about it, we realized these are all things that revolve around the idea of culture. And families have culture, societies have culture, but churches have culture. And so we're going to kind of look at these news items and examine them from the idea of culture and look at what lessons we can take for the church from these things that are going on. And so we want to start with the restaurant. Is that where we're going to start?
I think that was the.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Let's start there.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Let's jump in there. All right, so Cracker Barrel, a beloved institution of American life, is our first one. Americana, things are changing and not for the better. So I'm going to pass it off to one of you. Go ahead and get into this just a little bit.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah, Jack, I didn't know if it was going to be possible for you to screen share, if you'd like to put you on the spot here. Yeah, while you're doing that, I'll share.
So it actually dropped pretty recently. So I think the news came out several weeks, maybe months ago that Cracker Barrel was going to rebrand. I think however many years ago it was that they officially started selling alcohol. That was not a part of their original business plan, so to speak, but they rolled that out a few years ago.
Well, now they are essentially completely rebranding. Cracker Barrel, of course, is very famous for kind of the garage sale. Look inside the, you know, the restaurant that everybody.
Yeah, a little stuff on the wall, farm equipment and, you know, little knickknacks, you know, signs and stuff like that.
Cracker Barrel is one of the most. And to be fair, I was never a huge fan of Cracker Barrel, but it was one of the most iconic, is kind of a word that is thrown around a lot, but I would say one of the most iconic restaurants. And if you're watching it, you are now seeing the video of the new look, Cracker Barrel, which Basically looks just like a first watch type of place. Like very modern looking white shiplap on the walls and just kind of modern diner. And so it's making the headlines. He's. Jack is also, again, if you're watching, he's got the logo on there, which I don't know, guys, to me reminds me of a. Just a watered down Dollar General sign. But the point, the point is, as we get started, Joe, and I'll hand it to you, Cracker Barrel was iconic for several reasons. One, the interior, even the logo. The old logo is it was iconic with the barrel and the guy in the rocker. And you walk in, it's got the store, it's got. Got the old country food, which again, in my opinion, mediocre. But it was still kind of an iconic piece of American culture. And it has been, you know, kind of floundering. And this is the latest attempt to save it. But the attempt that they're making is essentially to completely change the entire culture to make it a modern diner looking to, you know, kind of give it the magnolia look, to change the logo. And you know, the jury is still out, but the early returns on what people are saying, they're not. Not very positive reviews so far. And so that's kind of where we're starting. Joe, what thoughts do you have on. On that as we term that comes.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: To mind is soulless. That's the term that initially came to my mind. We're losing the soul. And this sounds so like old man yelling at clouds. But like we're losing the soul of America. We're losing the it factor that makes us Americans. And it's not just this. It's like, you know, McDonald's getting away from the. The garage. Red and red and yellow. Yeah.
All of the fun and you know, everywhere, Wendy's and Burger King and they all get away from the fun. Burger King kind of does, but it's just almost done to just a ridiculous level and kind of stupid.
But we're missing out on the soul of America and everything that made America great, which is standards like don't bring alcohol in.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: There's a standard in a restaurant, the old mom and pop shop. Like you're walking into Nana's Nana's house or whatever and it's got all these things on the wall and you're going, what in the world? Like, we've all been there. We all know what that's supposed to be. You go and you play the checkers and the little peg game and whatnot. And everybody has Memories at Waffle or almost at Waffle House, that's another one. Denny's, Waffle House, Village Inn. Village Inn's kind of off the lift now, I suppose, but like, everybody's got memories at Cracker Barrel, at least if you're in the south or have ever spent time in the South.
And to me, it's kind of like, poof.
We wanted to rebrand because we think that we have. We're losing out on this piece of America or whatever it is, the piece of the culture that we want to be a part of, which is kind of a soulless culture. So we're going to rebrand and we're losing it. And what worries me is this kind of the hook, I suppose, of this podcast here is I think the church is doing the same thing. We're missing it out on the soul of the church, which is why you see so many of these rock band churches down the street. You know this, yes, we're non denominational, but all it is is just this community church feel that the dime a dozen. Get some cardboard box up there that can tell a good story and get a nice rock band up on stage. And it's like you missed out on the soul piece. We also see a lot of young kids gravitating toward high church. We talked a lot about that. We're kind of ringing the alarm on that. Why? Because they're looking for culture. They're looking for something that has weight, gravitas, history, this, this culture to it that whether I agree or they're not, obviously I don't agree with high church. I don't agree with Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, you know, kind of Catholicism. I don't agree with that. But there is. They take themselves seriously, specifically on some parts of the Orthodox community and such. They take themselves seriously. They have a rich history and a rich culture that they love to hold in your face.
We are actively so many times downplaying it, and that's what gets on. That's what kind of comes to my mind specifically when it comes to this.
This issue with Cracker Barrel is you. It's soulless. And we are losing the heart and the soul of the culture that this began.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah, when I posted about it, I said, abandon your identity to bring people in. It doesn't help bring people in. Now you have no identity and no people. And so they do this because, hey, our sales are low. We got to change. We got to shake things up. And so they change the logo, they change the look, they change the whole feel of the entire Thing and they're reporting. Yeah, we're seeing a bump in sales in some of these new stores. And I think people want to go and see. All right, what's this about?
I wouldn't be surprised if they're bankrupt in two to three years. We've seen this game before, like a last ditch desperate effort and we're going to totally change who we are. And okay, but now that's what everyone thinks of you as. And now they don't think of you, that you've lost that. And so the same thing as you're saying with churches, the doctrinal distinctives, the downplaying those things. We're going to tell everybody why we're exactly like them. And the brokenness culture thing, well, you're a broken sinner. So are we.
Have an identity, have a way to stand out, have a way to distinguish yourself from the world. Have just know who you are and be okay with who you are. Now an interesting thing and we'll, we don't have to get into this right now, but it is a necessary part of this discussion is they did need to make changes. Like the sales were bad.
You couldn't just be like, oh, I'm super traditionalist, I'm going to ride this ship all the way, you know, down. I'm going to go down with the ship kind of thing.
No, not that. So I'll turn over to you wouldn't take it. The angle you have to go there.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Well, that was the question I was going to ask is at what point do you and should you change or maybe not completely change, but modify your culture a bit? I'm sure you remember Jack, I think you wrote the article on it several decade plus ago now probably. And Domino's basically completely changed their culture for the most part. You know, they came out basically like we make terrible pizza and we are sorry for it as you're paraphrasing it. And so they're like, we're going to completely change everything.
I would argue there just to keep it in the kind of the restaurant metaphors there.
I would argue maybe there is a time at which you're. You need to look to again, maybe change is too strong, but modify or salvage some of your, your culture. But I think that's the difference here. What Cracker Barrel is doing is there.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: It seems to.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Seems to me that they are pretty much completely throwing it out the window and saying, where'd you gonna try to start to create a new culture? And so where you see it with churches is, you know, we, we, you know, church. The church has the reputation of being unloving or harsh. And so we're going to completely just try to, you know, make people think that we're not that. And that's kind of their main effort. And so I know we are probably into that a little bit later. I guess my question is to kind of put a different spin on it is at what point should you change your culture? Is there a point at which you should change your culture? And obviously, kind of taking it out of the realm of restaurants here.
Is there a point at which you should change your. Your. Your culture, Joe, what thoughts you have on that?
[00:08:59] Speaker C: Well, the interesting thing is, you know, my. My initial thought is, like, was it really the culture shift of the knickknacks on the wall the needed to change? Was it the logo that wasn't bringing people in? Maybe it was the fact that the service stinks, that you've done nothing. The management is horrible, that the people that serve microwaved. Yeah, yeah, the food is not good. Like, you have so many other bigger fish to fry, no pun intended. But, like, you have so much bigger fish to fry that you're focusing on the logo and you think that's the problem. And I do very much think it's the same thing about the church. We rail more than anybody on this podcast about the leadership crisis in the church. We have a management issue in the church, a leadership crisis. And instead, so many churches can go to the end. You know, there's not too many churches. Christ, to do this. And that's. I'm thankful for that. But, like, they end up turning into the megachurch or they allow women preachers or they allow.
They allow instruments in because that's what's going to bring the people in. It's like, maybe it's the fact that you're not cultivating any heart for God amongst the young kids. You have no discipleship ministry. Maybe it's the fact that the people you have brought in you don't keep because of a lack of discipleship ministry. Maybe it's because half the elders are whipped by their wives and they have no ability to stand up and say what they need to say. Like, you have a leadership issue. So I do think that we can shift culture, but it kind of determines, like, we have to determine what is the culture that we're looking to shift or are we tweaking things about our structure as a whole that we think might be holding us back.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: To your point, Joe, it's external things that was the point. When we were kind of talking about this off air, you know, before, you know, off air is, you know, one of the reasons Cracker Barrel is struggling is because you go in there and it's a poor experience most of the time. And so if that was the effort, if that was the, the direction that they place their effort and energy, you know, to take it into the sports realm. For an analogy, you know, one of the guys I listen to makes the point, like, if you want to build a really good football team, you don't go outside in. You don't start with the receivers and say, we're going to make those really good, and then work our way into, like, you know, the offensive line, all that. No, you start with, you know, the best teams have a really good offensive line, defensive line, they work their way out.
Similarly, you know, start, you know, call it the inside or call it at the top with, with congregations, with churches, you know, you don't start by, let's, let's get a flashy new logo, let's get a flashy new youth minister to come on board. Let's get a new kids program or a, you know, evangelism program. And I think those are kind of the.
Just once again to parallel it with Cracker Barrel. Those are kind of the logo change efforts, the, you know, rebranding, remodeling efforts that a lot of churches make instead of focusing on, like, what's our real problem here? And typically it is church leaders, but it's also family leaders, dads and husbands and fathers. And, you know, we've obviously harped on that quite a bit, but, like, that's what needs to change, not a shiny new evangelism program or, you know, a new youth minister. So that would kind of be the parallel I would make there.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: You brought up Domino's, which is interesting. The and Wendy's did the exact same thing and right in the same timeframe, and both of them came out and said, I'm sorry, our food has not been good enough and we're going to make it up to you. We're giving you this big discount. Come try us again. And sales skyrocketed for both of them because their product was better. Didn't need a logo change, didn't need a, you know, other stuff. And what's interesting with the Cracker Barrel thing is at the exact same time they're trying all this, there's another restaurant chain, it's a fast food chain that has been doing a big shakeup and they're exploding. It's steak N Shake. What did they do? They've got two things. I had an article, in fact I could do the screen share here if we want to see that one as well. Two things.
Bitcoin and beef tallow. They changed the way they made their french fries. You know, there is this move away from seed oils. I'm a big fan of that. We talk about that sometimes of going to cleaner ingredients. If you're going to make your french fries, make it in natural ingredients rather than these oils that are so bad for you. So they did that and then they took bitcoin as payments. That's kind of forward thinking that you don't think that would move the needle much. But it got people's attention because people are interested.
And so I've been a couple times I hadn't been to Steak and Shake, I don't know in 10 years. I mean like they're not even on my radar. But I hear, oh hey, beef tallow fries. Sure, I'll go try it. It's pretty good. I liked when the couple times I went one just being on the road or whatever, it's like I'm going to go there over somebody else. They change the product. And so to Will's point, I'm sorry, slapping a new logo on it would not have gotten me in the door. Doing what you do better is what people get in the door for. And so as a church, this is all the stuff we talk about correcting and as you said, stronger families, stronger men leading their homes, women submitting their husbands and parenting their kids in the right way and close knit fellowship. When I wrote Church Reset, it resonated with so many people. Not because of the greatness of me, but because so many people. When you just ask that question, shouldn't church be more not do we need to slap a better name out external any of those things.
Shouldn't we be closer to each other? Shouldn't we love each other more? Shouldn't we be doing the one another command. Shouldn't we do. Yeah, like people get that. And so when you're talking about a church rebrand, think in those terms.
So much of it is is this kind of marketing forward business mindset. And you look at even in business, the best thing to do is do your core thing better.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
Was to mix metaphors one more time or to add another whole layer to it. You see this in music too. Like you know, there'll be so much production that goes into like music videos and you know, the album cover and at the core of the Music industry is what. Is the music good? Is the music good? Can the artists sing? And do people like the music? That's the core product that people are going for. You do album covers and stuff matter? Sure. But like, at the end of the day, that's what's going to bring. Similar to Jack with the. The product going being what brought him a steak and shake, not the new logo.
What brings somebody to. To listen to a particular artist or particular band or whatever it is, Is the music good? Not the album cover, the music video, whatever it is. And so, I mean, Jack's exactly right. This applies to so many different things.
[00:15:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I was thinking about that. You know, is, shouldn't church be more.
Jackie and I recently talked about this. I think this is where, you know, this, this back and forth between kind of the boomers, millennials or Gen Z or whatever, you know, the culture wars and the generational wars we talk about is the younger generations are kind of looking around going, man, shouldn't this be more? Shouldn't America mean more? Shouldn't it be more than just big corporations making a bazillion dollar one off of the newest iPhone? You know, we want to dream. We want to have freedoms that, that, you know, the, the freedom to buy a house, the ability to buy a house, the ability to have a family and to not spend all our money on. On groceries every week. And like, shouldn't this be more. Shouldn't the economy be more? I think people are starting to ask that question and the. Once again, we want them to find the church when they ask that question. Man, isn't there more to life? Yeah, there is. This is where the church is. Well, isn't there more to whatever it may be? And this is where Christian nationalism also comes into play here. I feel like this is all our greatest hits here. But this is where Christian nationalism comes into play as well, which is I want them to find the church because we are the more and we are spreading in the community and people are seeing our influence and they're seeing our building and they're noticing who we are, and they notice we have a difference. We make a difference.
And so when they start looking around for more in life, like, man, my paycheck doesn't go as far.
I don't get along with my friends anymore because the political divide. I'm having a difficult time just making it through the day.
My job is really tough. Like, man, what else is there? It's like, here we are, here we are.
This is the rubber meets the road where the Church can really step in and provide that soul that we're talking about and that they can be. The more that people are looking for, the Cracker Barrel just went cheap. They didn't. They didn't become. The more they didn't become that. That soul. They went soulless and became cheap. And they think that's going to bring people in. That's not what brings people in. It's the same reason why people are willing to spend actually a little more money on the thing that they think works on the thing that they think gives them a little bit more. They want more. They want substance and value to what they're seeing.
That's what we as a church have an opportunity to provide for people is a substance and a value that we're not hardly getting anywhere else in this culture because so much of the culture is trying to sell out and go cheap. But we had a couple other articles that I wanted to.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Well, no, before we get to that, I wanted to give the steel, man, the other side, where we say these things of we should look different. And we'll make this argument on what our families look like, even dressing up for worship and things like that. And other people go the other direction of like, hey, let's really try to.
To relate to the world to be relatable and things like that. And so what's going to come to mind is 1st Corinthians 9 and Paul talking about making himself all things to all men, verse 19 of 1 Corinthians 9. For though I am free from all men, I've made myself a slave to all so that I may win more to the Jews I became as a Jew so that I might win Jews to those who are under the law as under the law, though not being myself under the law so that I might win those who are under the law, to those who are without the law, as without law, though not being without the law of God, but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law, that the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak I become all things to all men so that I may by all means save some. So they're going to see the things we're talking about and talking about being different and visibly noticeably different and having our own culture that is very much a counterculture to the world and not trying to be relatable and things like that. And they're going to point to this and go, well, Paul didn't do that. So I'll put that question to you guys.
We just spent 20 minutes saying why we don't agree with them, but why don't we agree with them?
[00:18:33] Speaker C: Well, contextually speaking, I don't think Paul's talking about making a difference in the world. Of course he would have everybody stand away from the world, but in some ways it's like, yeah, we're going to be different than the world, but we're still going to engage with the world. That goes to First Corinthians 5, right? Like, I'm not saying don't, don't mess with the world. I'm saying the guy who's a sinner in your midst, put him out.
And so Paul's not saying we shouldn't engage in the world. And in this way he is. I don't think he's making a broad statement of, well, we should just lower every standard so as to bring everybody in. We shouldn't hold to any standard. We shouldn't. We shouldn't, you know, if trying to be like Christ, that kind of just.
What's the term? Harshest. Somebody's mellow, like, you know, that just kind of. They don't really like that. So I'm going to become that to them.
No, we hold to the standard. His standard didn't change his standard for Christianity.
It's that when I'm speaking to Jewish brethren, yeah, I'm going to talk in their language. I'm going to use a little more of what they know. And when he's speaking to the Gentiles, he's probably going to use some of their jargon and he's going to talk to them as though he understands their culture and bring them in from that point of view. Very much like Mars hill in Acts 17, where he goes to them and says, yeah, this, this unknown God that you're referring to. Let me tell you about that unknown God. That's him going to the Jews. He became a. Or that's him going to the Greeks. He became that to them so as to help them. He went in, noticed their culture, spoke to their culture so he could win them over. I don't see Paul bowing down to the culture or Paul like, forgetting Christianity or not holding bounds to Christianity. These boundaries in Christianity. So is it to try to win those people on Mars Hill? It's like, here's Christianity and here's how it relates to your culture. So Christianity didn't sway with their culture. Christianity stood still. He went and grabbed them and related it back to their culture. And there's a big difference there. And that's what we're raging against is the Christians that are willing to give up the bounds of Christianity, the doctrine, the strong biblical takes everything else so as to go out of their way to kind of meet the people over here like Paul's not doing that. Paul meets them and brings them back toward a standard, if that makes sense.
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[00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah, first of all, that is definitely not a Gen Z term that you just use. I have not.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: It's definitely not in my entire life.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Sorry, say it again.
[00:21:26] Speaker C: Harsh. In somebody's mellow.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I've never heard of that.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: Is that a Gen X? Something like that? Yeah, you know. Yeah, no, sorry, that's a weird.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: So I love. Yeah, I was just giving you a hard time. I love your standard point, Joe. I think that's the best direction to go with it. Is that because people abuse this to no end to become all things to all men. Like, oh, I'll go to the strip club and see. Like, okay, well, that's obviously not what Paul was saying here.
We're not going to lower the standard. The other thing about it too, and Jack, I'm going to use this to segue. I'll let you kind of intro into kind of the. The next headline that we want to cover. But when Paul said that, what was the.
The message or the crux or call it the product, to stick with the metaphor, the. That he was really trying to push. Sell whatever word you want to use, it was still Christ in the gospel. What these, you know, whether it be churches or religious groups or whatever they're trying to sell. Niceness is what they're trying to sell. They're trying to put forth the idea that, hey, you want to come be a part of us because of how nice we are, they're selling themselves. Or exactly because of how Cool. We are. Because, you know, we're. Man, we're all just sinners, just like you. And it feels like Christ and the gospel is lost in the message. I mean, you read so many of Paul's letters, even in the Corinthians. It's, you know, Paul is very, very straightforward about even with the all things to all men. Yeah, you guys are sinners and you need the gospel. You need Christ. Christ is the message. Christ and the gospel is the message. He didn't change the message. He didn't change. Once again, to use the metaphor, the product to come join us because of how nice I am. Because, man, we got some really great people over here at this congregation. That wasn't the message. And yet that is exactly what so many of the. And typically it's community churches, more liberal churches, but even you see this in the Church of Christ, that's the product that they're selling. Come check us out. You'll really like it here. We'll treat you really well. We got all kind of programs for you.
You know, again, we're super nice.
Christ in the gospel is kind of the fifth or sixth or seventh, you know, rung on the ladder of things that they, you know, or I guess, seventh item on the agenda that they share when they're kind of wanting to put the message out. So that would be how I would respond to the passage that you brought up, Jack, is the message for Paul. The product for Paul did not change as Joe spoke to. It was just maybe a bit of a shift in kind of, again, language or whatever it was. And so I am curious, Jack. And like I said, I know I said I was going to segue that into the next topic, but I'm curious kind of how you would respond if you would say anything different than what we said to Steel man there.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: I don't think so. I mean, it's. Yeah, it is important to be relatable, but that doesn't mean Paul similar, like in a very. Just a couple chapters before, talked about the come out from among them and be separate like that you are different from the world and you need to look different from the world. And Romans 12 as well. Yeah, and. Well, and they're in Corinthians about the guy with his, you know, supposedly a stepmother.
And the church was tolerating that. And he's like, no, you got to get that out of there. And yeah, you're going to be in the world and you're going to relate with the world, but, like, separate yourself from the evil person.
The world has to look and go, hey, these people have standards. These people are that way. And I think that's important as well. And so that takes us to this next one.
We had an episode on church charity a while back and kind of helping the community, things like that. This is that to the extreme. Those who listen, you might remember we talked about how sometimes it can be overdone. We think that there's kind of this focus on outsiders, sometimes to the detriment of the local church. Well, here's one. A Lutheran church in Madison, Wisconsin, that tore down their historic building.
And let's see, a church that goes back to 1856. They've got this downtown building.
They tore it down. They're gonna build affordable housing. This was announced in 2023. The housing was supposed to be done this year.
As of the last headline I could find, they had not started by last fall. I don't have reason to believe they have started it yet, but I'm not sure.
There's a little bit of a lesson in that with this as well, of, like, grand gestures, but, you know, not.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Planning them properly, but the actual execution.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And. Well, the funny thing is this came across our radar because Joe saw it and shared by Facebook friends who were again, giving them all the publicity in the world.
And then it was like, okay, but have they actually helped anybody? Well, no, actually, they haven't. And so there's a little something to that that's kind of funny, but I don't want to dwell on that too much.
But this idea, this is very much the, hey, we're going to show the world how nice we are, how loving we are. We're going to demolish our own church building. Now, again, the steal it man argument would be, why do you need the church building? Wouldn't it be better to help people than have a building?
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: It's just a building.
So I'm going to put that out there. How. How would you respond to that? And this goes with the cracker barrel thing, too. Of like, do you have your own identity to hang on to, or is it all things to all men to this extreme?
[00:26:16] Speaker A: This is.
By the way, Jack Gino just said. Oh, how would you guys debate? You know, exactly. I don't know. I love it.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: It's good to be the guy with the screen share. I get to start.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, it's just so late at night and we're recording this. Jack's like, all right, you guys take the. No, I'm just kidding.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: It's online Stuff, man, this is fruit.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Of the same tree of. You know what?
[00:26:36] Speaker C: We're.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: We're not going to actually have worship this morning. We're going to go out and serve in the community. We're going to go, you know, feed at the homeless shelter or. I mean, you'll see community churches that do this, that they will advertise that essentially once again, cancel worship so that they can go serve. And you know, the inclination is to say, man, that that's great. You know, serving others is great.
This is where a fundamental misunderstanding of specifically Jesus and, And you know, John 13 with washing, the washing of the feet and you know, you know, the command, the new command I give you to love one another.
The person with, or I guess the, the congregation person, whatever, with very shallow Bible knowledge takes that to mean, you know, showing love to the non Christian, the world.
That's not the context of John 13 or John 4, really, that, you know, John 13:17 is the whole section there. That's not the context. Jesus is not saying, you know, the new command that I have for you is to go love everybody in the world just as far as you can, just as many people as you can. He said that you love one another. Well, who's he speaking to there? He's speaking to his disciples. And so this is where I believe that this idea of serving people has honestly become a bit of. Bit of a. And this is, you know, Tim Keller language, so I gotta be careful here. But a bit of an idol, like it's. It's kind of, to some extent, anytime we are exchanging the worship of God for, we're gonna go serve people.
I think that's where we've got our parties out of whack. And again, so I know that's not what the headline was saying, but I think it's fruit of the same tree. Whereas, you know, again, the church buildings aren't sacred. I know this was a Lutheran church, but take a church of Christ as an example. The buildings aren't sacred. But what message does it send if we're gonna say, well, we don't really care about any of this, you know, history or heritage, or the fact that, you know, we worship here together as a congregation, we're gonna tear it all down for the purpose of serving not our fellow members, not members of the body of Christ, as Galatians 6 teaches, but the rest of the world.
I think that's less of a biblical principle than people actually think that it is, is the way that I would say that.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Joe. What.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: What would you Add to that.
[00:28:39] Speaker C: I got so many thoughts, so many thoughts.
I think we do a very bad job of taking Acts as normative, of taking the early church as normative and of misunderstanding even the works of Christ. As. And this sounds crazy, but as normative. Like, yes, Jesus going and healing people so as to have them believe in him. Did he serve the poor? Yes, he did. Do I think it's wrong to serve the poor? No. But what do we see toward the end of his life brings those in the upper room right as and he talks about their unity and he washes their feet and he gets them to serve one another. And it wasn't just go serve the community and hope that, you know, they'll recognize you're a really nice guy and come around and worship me. It's like there was a reason these things took place. But what do you see throughout Acts? You see them taking care of one another, selling their possessions to give not just to the random poor, but to those who are in need within the body of Christ. So I do think that point has to stand. But the second thing is when we talk about Christian nationalism, we always come back to, well, they didn't need a church building because look in the Old Testament or look in the, you know, the early church going back to Acts 2, like they're just being in homes, you know, we mean in catacombs. We could just so easily do that.
There's something to be said about, we stand on and Jack has done a good job of really kind of playing this, playing this out and writing about this. We stand on the shoulders of 2000 years of church history to get to this point. Giving it up and going back to the catacombs is not a victory.
It's not a victory. A victory is Christ victorious. There's a, you know, the church is galore, man. There's so many people that come to church. You see a town where everybody comes to the church and the church building is seen as this beacon of hope and as a light in the community. And it's like, man, that's where I worship. And everybody's pumped about it. No, we just decided to give it up. We decided to give up all the culture, the 2000 years of, of hard fought culture, the culture wars against Islam and the Crusades and everything that's taken place. We've gotten to this point so we can all cast it aside because really, why does it matter? It would be nicer to just go back to worshiping in homes as though people haven't fought for this as though people haven't died for our right to have a church building on a corner. And we'd so easily give it up. It's like poor Jesus says, the poor, you'll always have like, yeah, me. And the point in that purpose is there will always be the poor to serve, there will always be the poor to give. And sure, we can help in those ways, but we got to recognize what we have, which is the church right in front of us, the church victorious, the church that is going out into the culture and making a difference. And we so easily give up our ground in the name of love. We so easily give up our ground. This is why church history and why church and Christian nationalism matters is because what are we willing to give up so as to make the world happy, so as to placate the world? That's the frustration. And this is why we're losing so many young people to go to the orthodoxes. Could you imagine an orthodox church doing this? An orthodox church or Catholic church going, we know we've been a pillar in this community for the last 150 years. And this is the Cathedral of Saint so and so.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: We don't care.
[00:31:27] Speaker C: Notre Dame. Do you know how many apartment buildings we could build at Notre Dame? You know, to put up for all of these poor people in Paris? Why not? Why shouldn't we? Isn't that the loving thing? It's like, are you out of your mind? Why in the world would we do that? We're not going backwards. But in this situation it does. It just gets me really frustrated. Clearly gets me very frustrated that we so easily give up the culture, we so easily give up the ground that was hard fought all in the name of love when we could have easily been serving those people and bringing them to Christ and making that a hub for those people to come find shelter. As a church, we don't need to build low income housing. Just drives me nuts.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Well, Jack, before you jump in, Joe, what was the context of Jesus saying, the poor you will have with me always?
It was when somebody brought a very expensive perfume for Jesus specifically something for Christ and Judas. Man know, that should have been sold and, and that could have, you could have built. We could have built a lot of, you know, income housing with that perfume. You know, obviously it's not what he said, but you know, basically this could have been sold for as Jack's got the verse reference up on the screen 300 narrative given to the poor. And Jesus basically kind of pushes back on that and says, as Joe referenced earlier, the poor you have with me always, or, I'm sorry, the poor you will have always, but you not always have me.
And I, I see a parallel there of, once again, the, the, the human inclination might be to say, man, that's kind of a waste of money there, that's kind of a waste of resources there, to spend that on perfume for Jesus, when Jesus seemed to differ on that. And so, Jack, just to bring you in on that, I wanted to give the context of that verse reference there.
[00:32:59] Speaker C: Joe?
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Yeah, one of the other ones that people will go to for this is Matthew 25. And of course, Jesus saying that you did it to the least of these, you've done it to me. And so you've got to go out and do these things for people. And it's better to do that than to have your church building or whatever.
This always gets left out when people quote this, when they go to these verses.
What does it actually say there? You did, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them. So when he says the least of these, it's not just, hey, everybody, and of course we're supposed to do good things. We're also told in Galatians 6 to do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith. So you start with your fellow Christians, make sure they're well taken care of before you go on and just start trying to fix the world's problems. And it's good for the church to help the world. I mean, how many hospitals have been started in the name of Christianity, things like that. But not at the expense of the family, not at the expense of the culture and all that. And so when he's talking about the least of these, if you're stealing from your own people to give to the world, like, that's not okay. That is not what he's telling you to do. He's talking about in that Matthew 25 passage, those who receive the apostles and those going out as missionaries and doing the work of the Lord, that's who are going to get those rewards. And so you've got that side of it.
There's a really funny clip that I've seen before. It was years ago. I think it was David Platt. You know, he wrote Radical is a big name. He's kind of on the downswing now because he's one of these Judas, can we sell to the poor kind of people? And it kind of comes out that that's not, it's not on the up and up, but he was bragging about how his church was all in on mission work. And they got to the point where they trimmed down the budget so much that they cut out the goldfish budget for the kindergarten class so they could send it to missionaries and the other ministers, whoever he was talking to on that thing were like, if you take goldfish away from my kid, we're going to have a problem like this.
When he really nailed him, I said, you're selling a poverty gospel that Jesus, you're teaching these kids that God is not good enough to provide them snacks and missionaries and so sorry, you've just got to take a back seat for the missionaries at 5 years old. Like, we get so weird about these things. But the other direction I want to go with this is we.
This was a Facebook post where somebody had dug this headline up. 3 or 2 and a half year old headline, bragging on this church again. It hasn't happened. These people aren't housed from best I can tell.
But the responses were really, really interesting to me.
So here's somebody with a rainbow something or another profile picture. Look, actual Christians doing Christian things instead of protesting things that are none of their business. It would be nice to see more of this.
I agree this is a great start, but I'm not just going to gallop straight to wow, doesn't this outweigh all the bad quite yet?
If this action didn't affirm this church is awesome. The rainbow hearts, which there are rainbow hearts on the church's banner when the headline picture of the church building the rainbow heart sure seal the deal. So that's there. She's okay with that church because they have rainbow hearts. Another person. This is what being a Christian means to me. Giving and loving, not excluding and hating.
I wish more churches were giving back to their communities like this. I'd have a very different view of religion. Thank you for sharing the positivity. I am an atheist and I approve so long as affordable means affordable. I've seen otherwise elsewhere. Well done.
Some people are going to see that series of comments and go see, look what this church accomplished by getting the outsiders to like them. She's still an atheist. You've got the other guy going. Yeah, well, you still got to win me over. The other lady was like, yeah, well more churches like this and the other ones, well, yeah, but you're still hating and judging. And if churches, if you would give up the hating and judging and be charitable, then I'd come.
Yeah, you know, you haven't helped them, you haven't let them Christ, you've met what Will said earlier. You've made them think you're a really nice person. That's all you accomplished.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that was just that. You know what those comments didn't say. Awesome, I'll be there this Sunday. Oh, wow. Hey, who can I reach out to for a Bible study?
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Man, Men and brethren, what shall we do?
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Exactly? Like, yeah, what must I do? Don't see any of that. And that's the whole point with this entire thing is once again, even though my position would be, once again, they kind of misunderstand the idea of serving people according to, you know, John and Matthew 25 is Jack brother up. But it doesn't achieve the goal that everybody thinks it does. It doesn't achieve the objective of man. It just brings so many people. It doesn't, you know, largely speaking, the people who are, who are completely out on Christianity, who are completely out on religion, as you saw in some of those comments, of a kind gesture, a again, service to the poor is not going to change their mind. It's all it's going to do is once again you're going to. You're going to be in kind of the strange position of kind of right down the middle of the people who are opposed to you are not going to join you. And then maybe there's people who, you know, you're going to offend who, you know, due to the culture or whatever that you kind of want to keep. And so what it does is it puts churches and individuals in this nasty middle ground of we're kind of on this, in this squishy range of we're going to be loving to these people, but also try to appeal to these people. And this is where it's like, man, pick a side. Pick a side to be on. And you can tell based on these comments it's not winning anybody over. The look at us and look at how kind we are is not winning. Families, young people, old people, atheists, agnostics, whatever. It's not winning them over, Joe.
[00:38:26] Speaker C: But it does achieve their goal. You have your award in full.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:30] Speaker C: You know that that's exactly what you got, is you got the praise of men and outward, they're outward trumpet as.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: They went to give alms.
[00:38:38] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly. I mean, you see this in Matthew 6 as he's breaking it down of like, hey, don't let your right hand know what your left hand's doing. You know, when you go to give and do these things in secret and the fasting in secret and everything else. And you just get the sense that that's not at all the case of what this is all about. It's like they had their reward in full. They got all the pats on the back from the atheists and all of the rainbow loving people and everything else.
Not the, the right rainbow, Genesis 9, rainbow loving people, but the other rainbow loving people. And to me this speaks of Gnosticism. This is where it really ties in with the cracker barrel thing we're talking about earlier is it's just, it's this culture and it speaks to the Gnostic culture of like, buildings don't matter, you know, it just doesn't matter. We can be a church anywhere. It's like, go tell that to your kids.
Homes don't matter. We could be a family anywhere. Like homes do matter, the houses physically matter. These things are. Let's stop being Gnostic with it and let's recognize that some of the physical things that bind us together are what other people are looking for. They're looking for substance. They're looking for something that says, and I'm part of something bigger than myself and this whole like loose, kind of esoteric man, we're all a family. Like, yeah, I realize I'm a family of people around the world, Christian wise, I realize I'm a family with those people. There's something special about Jackson Temple where we go. There's something special about the church that we're a part of where I show up and I, I do my time and I help with the building and I, you know, and I help make everybody's lives better and I'm there and I'm present with that church and I'm going to make sure that I clean up my pew for the kids and that if we have a work day outside, I'm going to be there. Why? Well, those things don't actually matter like they do. They do. It's part of the culture. It's part of us taking ourselves seriously as a people, as a culture, as a church and saying these things matter. And so when we are so willing to give it up willy nilly, what message do we send to everybody else around us? It's kind of like, well, the Lord's church will always be there. Like, well, not any and not anymore. Now it's a lot harder to find because they meet at Marsha's house or whatever and we don't know where to find them because they sold their building, gave it to the poor and now what, did the church dissolve? Did it go somewhere Else did it move into a smaller building? Why not sell that one? Why not sell Marsha's house? Why not give that to the poor? Like, where does it end? At some point you have to stop being gnostic and you have to start realizing like these things have value and matter when it comes to establishing a culture.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. I wanted to tell you about our seminars at Focus Press. Each of us involved in the work have a series of lessons that we have prepared to encourage churches to help you understand the word better, how to navigate this culture. We cover a wide range of topics, from things like evolution and apologetics to cultural issues to the family to the godly young men. Kind of content that Joe and Will do to church reset, which is of course my passion to schedule one of us. Whether Dr. Brad Harab will harab Joe Wilkie or me. Jack Wilke, reach out to
[email protected] if you'd like to talk to me or if you'd like to talk to one of the others. I'll pass your information along to them. We'd love to come and encourage your church and put on one of our Focus Press seminars.
Have I talked about the Steven Furtick thing? I stopped me if I have before. But the, you know, he's megachurch pastor guy, you know.
Yeah. Really rich and likes to flaunt his wealth up on stage and all that. He's one of the worst. But he had this sermon, the clip went viral for a while and he basically was like, once you become a member here, you are not a target of this church's mission anymore. Like, this is not about you anymore.
You know what? Credit to him for being honest because.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: That'S what all these other quiet part out loud he is.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: That's what all the other churches are doing. They're just not saying it. And that's. I mean, it's the same thing that's happening with the American culture. This kind of, well, anybody can be an American idea. Like, you're taking the children's food off their plates and giving it to everybody. You're taking the sheep's dinner and using it to bait wolves and goats. And those are on the outside.
And it's the same thing with the church is like when you don't say, hey, it is good to be a part of this. It's important to be a part of this. We have something special here. And it's like, man, anybody can come have this. You know, we're going to go and beg and grovel for the approval of atheists with rainbow flags and all that stuff. They're not going to come in here. But, boy, the most important thing in the world is they think I'm nice. What are you telling to the people inside your four walls, right?
[00:42:53] Speaker A: You're alienating them.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: You're alienating them. You don't matter.
Like, you're, you're not our target, you know, and basically suck it up. You need to be okay with this. You need to realize like, that you're not getting anything. We're going to starve you to give to other people.
This is, this is what happens just across the board. Like, families are being told to do this to their own kids. Countries are being told to do it to their own citizens. Churches are being told to do it to your own people. Hey, how about have a healthy family? And that is your basis. Going back to our point about Wendy's and Domino's and Steak n Shake.
Get your house in order before you go out elsewhere. Not literally. Pull up everything in your house that's not bolted to the floor and sell it to, to appease everybody outside your house. Take care of the people in your house.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: There's also a lack of sincerity, a lack of genuineness that goes into kind of the way, you know, especially with the marketing push of, you know, we really just want to appeal to young families. So we're gonna have all these programs. It's like there is once again a level of sincerity and lack of genuineness to, you're just trying to sell me a product to get me in the building. And then again, this, like the Steven Furter guy said, like that point, I'm gonna move on to somebody else. People can see through that. You know, if I hang around somebody who, you know, all they ever do is, is just, you know, you know, as the kids are saying these days, glaze me, you know, compliment non stop. Like, oh, you're just flying. Flatter me all over the place. I can see right through that. Right? That doesn't feel very genuine versus when somebody gives you a very real legitimate compliment or whatever it is. And I think similarly, this is one of the reasons why a lot of people are very wary of like door knocking and, you know, people who are Christians, because it's like, what are they trying to sell me? There's a lack of genuineness, there's a lack of sincerity. It's once again, come see how nice I am. Come look at, you know, all the wonderful things that we have to, that we are marketing towards you to get you in the door.
And then after you're in the door, you know, we'll move on to the next, next shiny thing. And people can see through that. People can see through a lot. And I, I think once again to go back to the restaurants, people can see through the Cracker Barrel thing as well. I think that's why they're getting ripped so much, is it's like you guys are just trying to slap a shiny new and not even all that good looking, you know, logo and look on everything and you're not really trying to, to do what's going to make the product better. And so I'm out. And that's once again the application. That's the application I'd make to the church, for the churches and, and for kind of Christianity in general. Here is we've got a message and it needs to be a sincere and genuine message, which to go back to my point earlier is Christ is Lord. He needs to be the Lord of your life. We have the gospel to offer.
That's the message. Take it or leave it. It's not a, please, come on, come on, let me try to sell it to you. Please. Well, what if I offered you this, well, what if, what if I told you we had this over here? What if I told you we had this program like it's not going to do it. That is insincere and that's not genuine and people can see right through that.
[00:45:46] Speaker C: I want to go back to something Jack, you said a little bit earlier, you know, talking about putting food on the kids, on our kids table and things like that, taking care of our kids. This something Tucker Carlson has been really big on and I've appreciated this quite a bit, is like, I don't really care about all your social policies. If my kids can't find a wife, can't find a career and can't, can't have a home, like they can't buy a home.
All of this doesn't matter until it actually affects my kids. And that's something that's kind of lost. And that's the culture of America that we're trying to bring back. And everybody's just going nuts about Trump and this whole D.C. thing, trying to clean up the streets of D.C. and he's cleaning up the Smithsonian. You're starting to see this where Trump's thinking about going around to places in California and Chicago and LA and things like that. We're going to start cleaning it up. If you're not going to, and people are just losing their minds. You can't do that.
We can, because this is American culture, is American exceptionalism.
And you call it white imperialism. You call whatever it is. At the end of the day, I don't want my kids to be scared going to school every day, which we're going to homeschool, so it's not going to be a problem.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: But going to a city, you should be able to go walk around downtown, the nation's capital, or other major cities.
[00:46:47] Speaker C: Without know that's going to be okay.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, getting mugged without getting stabbed with any of those things, which currently is not the case. And that's ridiculous. And it is one of those, like, hey, let's do something to stop this. And so to run this next news story, I'm going to kind of take where you're going with that and plug it back into the church thing. There's a church discipline side of this as well. Of like, you've got to clean, clean your house up. That's part of having a better product.
That's the thing we really don't do. That is the thing that is just.
It's out of bounds.
I've been writing on this. I've been talking about this. I've got a lot of people mad at me on Substack, just in the comments. And one of the topics has been youth attend, skipping church for youth sports.
Why is that not a church discipline issue?
Why is that not a. Hey, you're really not supposed to be going to Little Timmy's baseball game. You need to be here on Sunday morning and the second time they do it say, that's really a problem. And we're not going to ask you to say prayers or stand up and lead worship anymore when you're here and go on from there. Church discipline of, like, you really need to not do this, and here's why. It's a sin and all of these things.
[00:47:55] Speaker C: Could you.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: Has. Could you see that happening? Why doesn't that happen? And so do you. But it's the same thing when you start cleaning up a city and saying, hey, we're just not gonna let you just do crime openly anymore. And there's this uproar.
Think about all the things people get away with in churches. And if you start saying, no, we're not getting away with that anymore, you.
[00:48:14] Speaker C: Get the same response, the same as the DC thing. Protect the family. You know, I want to protect my family. And if that means that Trump's got to come in and do it, great, great.
You know, at this point, you could talk about, oh, it's not unconstitutional, whatever it is. I just want my kids to be safe. And I want to be safe. I want my wife to be safe. You know, I put the family first. Church discipline is about putting the family first. You know what, you're, you're spitting on everybody else that's here. I know you think that that little Timmy is going to be the next baseball star, but you're telling everybody else here that they don't matter. And you're telling God that he doesn't matter, and that's a no go. And so, yeah, you're protecting the family, you're protecting the culture. And what matters to you. And the problem is when you farm out the culture and it's anything and everything goes, we just want you to be a part of it. Like, be part of what? What specifically are you calling us to?
[00:48:55] Speaker A: That is exactly the point I was gonna make because we, we've used this word a lot, and that is culture.
If you were to ask the average member of the church, and again, I'll isolate the church of Christ, hey, what's the culture of your church? What do you think they would say? Do you think they would look at you and just kind of blankly stare at you and be like, what? What are you talking about?
We don't have a culture in a lot of instances. And obviously this is the point we're getting at. But like, you know, Joe, you're talking about we need to protect our culture. A lot of Christians, a lot of churchgoers are like, what, what, what culture are you talking about? Like, and this all goes back to, it's stuff we've talked about, but this all goes back to church leadership not establishing the culture of man. People just wear whatever they want. There are no modesty standards. There are no really parenting standards. I mean, you raise faithful kids, you don't raise faithful kids. We'll treat you the same. It doesn't really matter. You know, as we talked about a couple weeks ago, you know, you watch whatever you want to watch. There's really no standard for that. Again, educate your kids however you want to. There's really not a standard for that. And you want to raise your daughter to be a stay at home mom, you want to raise your daughter to be a high powered lawyer, Go for it. Both are exactly the same. You want to raise your kids to, to marry faithful Christians. You want to raise your kid to go travel for 30 years and never get married. Married exactly the same. We don't have a culture. We don't Have a culture. And so when we're talking about we got to protect our culture, we got to start by establishing a culture in the first place, which again, is what we're talking about here. But we don't. There's nothing to protect in a lot of congregations. And this is where it starts with the leadership of, instead of basically having anything goes policy, just don't cheat on your wife and don't kill anybody, which is basically the only time anybody's ever going to step in for church discipline.
We got it. We got to establish a culture. We have got to come, come out and say, this is what we as Christians do. This is what this church does. Not just for three hours a week, but Monday through Saturday, you know, when we're not together, this is what is expected of Christians. You talked about high church. That's why people go to high church, because there's expectations and there's a standard, there's a culture. We don't have that. So how hard is it going to be? It's going to be impossible to get people to want to protect the culture because we don't have one. And that's why it's up to leaders to establish it.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: Think about First Timothy 3:15, where Paul calls the church the household of God, the pillar in support of the truth. This is how you get there is you're teaching it, you're expecting it.
I use the word enforcing it one time. People didn't like that one either. But like, hey, actually, we expect you to follow the Bible and we expect you. We're going to have like some commands that you have to do because the Bible says you have to do it. We're going to have some oughts, some things you're expected to do that maybe the Bible doesn't command. But hey, around here, that's what we're going to do. That's what your culture is, is, hey, this is how we live. And yeah, you can overdo that and get too narrow and too exclusive, that's not going to work.
But to have a culture, something worth preserving and getting back to what we were talking about of the product that you have should be a loving church family following the headship of Jesus Christ.
These are the things that it requires.
I've talked about this before and I keep coming back around to it.
I had a lot of people loved the book Church Reset.
When I write stuff about church leadership, about church discipline, about things like that, people don't like it as much. A lot of the people who like that book don't like the other stuff I write, it's like, I'm sorry, but this is how you get there. You can't have that close knit family, the love, the shared, you know, the oneness that you're looking for, that unity.
You can't have it without standard setters, without church discipline, without culture, without specifics, without oughts, without all of these things we're talking about that people just don't want. And the only culture you're really allowed to push in churches anymore is this all out external, all charity, all, you know, the worried about the other and not the family itself. And that's not going to get you there either. And so you've got to have these things and you've got to have people who are willing to tolerate these things.
That when an eldership says, thus saith the Lord, this is what we're going to do and we expect you to do it. The people say, amen.
You've got to have, you know, a pulpit that's willing to say, hey, the Bible says this. It's kind of weird that we just ignore that and don't do it. You got to again, gender roles, all the things you guys are talking about, you have to have these things established.
And it's important that a church pushes and promotes these things. But it's only going to go so far as the people let it and so many times people throw a fit. Until that changes, we're just not going.
[00:53:19] Speaker C: To have the culture, right? Yeah, it's such a comprehensive discussion. There's so many things, so many things happening in the culture, to use our word. Again, so many things happening in the news. It seems like the headlines are there and we're just seeing a clash where people hate Trump for certain things and some people support Trump for these things of what he's doing. But really what it's trying to get down to is it's a culture war. We're trying to define what the culture is and where we go from here.
So, fellas, I feel like we've looked at a lot of different stuff, a lot of different news articles, but to me it really comes down to the church has to define. Will, you said it so well. The church has to define its culture. We have to get to the point where we can offer something greater than the other places. And not because we're trying to compete with them, but because it's like, man, we have the truth, we have to stand on that, we have to not be afraid of it. But yeah, we're passionate about it. We've talked about the Orthodox, we've talked about the high church. LGBTQ has a culture, you know, whether we want to admit it or not, they have a culture. That's why we've lost a lot of kids to that. Like, we need something that people can look at and go, that's. That's it. That's the truth. That's the church. I see it.
That means we've got to start uniting on certain things, which is what Jesus prayed for. It's what the Restoration Fathers prayed for, you know, and what they work toward is this unity. There's a big piece of this. That's what's going to help us bring about the culture. But we're going to have to determine what part of the culture is that. And unfortunately, yeah, there's going to be some division as you're figuring it out. There's going to be some people that do not like the Thus saith the Lord. This is where it's at. And what we have to pray for is that they have the hearts of the people. In Josiah's time, as Josiah finds the law, he reads the law, and people are weeping like, my goodness. Wow. We didn't have any idea that this was what was supposed to take place. And they're lost, and they realize, we got to come back to the standard. We got to come back to the law. That's what we need to pray for, is for the church to have a heart. The under, you know, the leaders, to be like Josiah, find the law, preach it boldly, read it boldly, proclaim it, and for the people to have that heart to say, yeah, we want to follow the leadership here and establish this.
[00:55:14] Speaker A: Culture, my last thought would be that in our current age, where there are so many different things competing for our time, especially married with kids, like, you know, speaking for myself here, there's just so many things competing for my time. And for the average Christian, it's the same.
When you have a church doesn't have a culture identity, and it's just, once again, hey, show up when you can, we're happy to see you, and then you can go home.
There's going to be less incentive to spend your time doing that. That we. We have to, through this culture setting, give people a reason to want to be a part of the church. Give people. And again, it's through Christ is through all these things. But Christ being a Christian is supposed to have a culture, and that's what gets people to want to spend the time there. I've said before, for the Most part, people don't want to be a part of something that doesn't really have a lot of it doesn't feel important. That that feels like it can, you know, take it or leave it. I run a Chick Fil A here in Spring Hill. You know why people want to work for Chick Fil A? Because there's a culture at Chick Fil A. It's not just your average job where hey, just come in, give a half hearted effort and you can collect your paycheck and go home. Like, no, that we have a culture here. You will say these things, you will act this way, you will wear these clothes or wear this uniform. And people love it. It's a culture that people want to be a part of. It's kind of a weird example, but it's a culture that people want to be a part of. People want, specifically guys want to be a part of something that feels important. And as long as we continue to make the church feel not that important again, just get to it. When you can just put in your two hours a week, you're going to give less people incentive to be a part of it. And that is going to impact young people. Because do you think young people are going to, in 30 years, are they going to live in a world that's busier or less busy than it is now? Are there going to be less or more things competing for their time than there is now? Obviously they're going to have way more things competing for their time and they have to decide where are they going to put their time. And again, it's not that we need to like market or sell the church. I railed against that earlier. My point is through the culture, through these things, it makes it feel like this is something that's worth being a part of and not just a, you know, random social club that you, you show up to when you can. And so we have to, through establishing a culture, give people a reason to want to be a part of the culture. So those would be my, my closing thoughts.
[00:57:33] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
Know who you are is what it comes down to. And that needs to be a good thing, like knowing who you are. If you're just the, hey, I'll sell myself out for everybody's applause at any time, then, well, that's not good. I mean, you can know who you are and to be wrong, but like find out what Christ wants us to be about, Biblical standards, about all these things, the culture that the Bible sets and be okay with that. Realize, I mean, he said woe are you, when all men speak well of you. And as we saw that church boy, everyone thinks they're great. Not showing up, not converting to Christ, but people think they're great.
He said get ready to be hated because they hated him. I mean they put him on a cross. There's going to be things that, yeah, not that we're going out of our way to be hated, but in, in a world that's so against him, that's okay. Know who you are. Stand by it, cracker barrel, you know, like just the, the, the people pleasing approach, it doesn't work. It, it's, it's not the right way to go. Know who you are. Yeah, make adjustments as needed but don't lose that identity. And I, I think that's one of the, the real challenges is Christianity's lost the identity so much that outside of Sunday morning there, as we said, there really isn't one.
So know who you are and then be good at it. Like be your best product. And so just to kind of summarize all the thoughts, we went over there. So yeah, a lot of, I don't know, headlines that don't really go together on paper but as we talked about, hey, what's in the news? What have we seen? It's like man, there's a common thread through this and so I hope you guys enjoyed it. Very interested to see your comments where ever you put them. YouTube, Focus plus of course Spotify, I get those as well although they're a little harder to find. But you can leave them wherever you find us. Be sure you're following the Facebook page, the we post quotes, clips, stuff like that there. It really helps when you like and share those. So please do always click like if you really like it then click share and share it with your friends. And if you're watching on YouTube be sure to hit the like button on the way out. We will talk to you guys on the next one.
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