[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome back in to the Think Deeper podcast presented by FocusPress. I'm your co host Will Hara, joined by Joe and Jack Wilkie. It is that time of year where we generally get into some kind of debate topic discussion surrounding Halloween and then kind of what a Christian's response to that should be. As far as the main episode goes today we are not going to be covering Halloween.
If you would like to know what are our thoughts on it, if you're a fairly new listener, we did an episode around this time last year. We did. We did one the first year that we started to think deeper back in 2022, in October of that year. And as one of our more popular episodes from that year, from what I remember, we revisited it last year and thought had another really good discussion on it.
It's one of those topics that the three of us have. Not a ton of major disagreement, but more disagreement than you're generally going to find for the three of us come within that topic. And so we covered that last year. As much fun as we have talking about and as much as I think everybody enjoys it, it was just a year ago. So we are not planning on covering that this year for this episode. But at the end of this episode we're going to have a think fast. It's going to be somewhat tangentially related to Halloween and the Christians response to some of the stuff out there. So we'll spend seven to ten minutes on it at the end.
Guys, for our topic today, what we're going to be talking about is so all of us obviously are faithful members of the Church of Christ. We all grew up in the Church of Christ.
There's no secret that if you grow up within the Church of Christ, there are going to be certain things that we're just going to call them struggles, certain struggles that the Church of Christ has, certain struggles that members of the Church of Christ has. And as always, to preface it with the qualifier of we love the church, we love the Church of Christ. We firmly believe, obviously we're members of it, that it's the church that we need to be a part of.
But we also want to acknowledge some of the things that we struggle with as a collective unit. And I think kind of the way that I'm viewing this episode is obviously I plan to raise my children within the Church of Christ and we're going to go over the top five kind of biggest Church of Christ struggles. And the way I'm kind of choosing to view it is these are the things that I'm Going to have to spend a little bit extra time on with my kids as I raise them again in this atmosphere, this environment of the Church of Christ that's got a lot of really good things going for it. A lot of obviously, we think it's the church that most closely lines the New Testament. These five things I feel like, again, just to kind of set up the episode, I'm going to be having to spend a little bit more time on with my kids, make sure they fully understand, make sure that I teach them kind of what the Bible has to say about each one of these. And I don't know, a little bit more diligent effort is going to need to go into it for these things. So we're going to count down from five to one. Joe, I'll hand it to you you for any introductory thoughts you have on kind of that idea. And then also, whenever you're ready, you can go ahead and get us into our fifth one as we count down five to one. But biggest Church of Christ struggle is what we're covering today. Joe, what thoughts you have?
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think there's been three in the last man, probably four days. I think three of these are cropped up in three different conversations just with people randomly of them saying, man, I wish we were better at this or we don't do a good job at this.
And so, yeah, it's like, you know what, this is one of those that as we are kind of shooting around ideas and such, this is not to take a blowtorch to the Church of Christ. We've done podcasts on what we think we get right. I think there's plenty that we get right, man. I think there's some things we really struggle with that if we want to make a dent in the culture and make a real strong impact, we're going to have to figure out some of these things. We're going to have to be able to navigate our way through. I think all five of these because we see other places that do and these matter to people. It used to be that, you know, the Bible thumping just memorized Scripture and kind of put the hand on top of the head because they knew the Bible so well, right in the courthouse, like the myths and things like that that go around, that used to be our calling card.
Okay, that's great. But, man, there's a lot that we're kind of missing out on, I think. And so that's where the nature of this and where this is coming from is not that. Well, we're Just sick of it type of thing. No. And we pray that you also are the same, that you recognize the, the things that the church Christ offers. And I think that we are the closest to the truth when it comes to these matters. Doesn't mean that we don't struggle in certain areas. And so, Jack, any opening thoughts from you before I jump into number five?
[00:04:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean that's. The accusation of negativity always comes around. It's really not that. But acknowledging common things we do have to overcome common things. That when you talk to somebody, I just talked to somebody yesterday, I said, yeah, the Church of Christ, they're known for one of these things we're going to get into. And so knowing that and improving on that, it takes a while to set a reputation in place.
So it takes a while to roll back that reputation.
And of course that means acknowledging and working on that reputation.
It doesn't happen overnight. But if you do acknowledge it and put the work in over time, I think you get there.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So as we get into it, number five, I was talking with a client earlier this week and he grew up in the church as a.
Yeah. Strong member of the church. Father and mother were very strong members of the church. And he was talking about. Now that he is, I think, in his 50s talking about. He really struggles with our number five is emotion. Emotion. He struggles to show the emotion because he is around other Christians, Christendom, I should say, broad ranging Christians, and he sees the emotion that they have toward God. He hears moving stories. And you know, these people start to break into tears and they, you know, they're immediately praising God or they're immediately getting on their knees in prayer. This, this very strong prayer. You look at worship and kind of the whole Hill song where they put the hands up in the air. And I'm not saying we need to do any of those things, but there's an inherent emotion that I think comes along with not just community church, but other, other churches as well.
High church, of course, like Catholicism can, can elicit some emotion based on the Mass and you know, what they do in mass and how they kind of get the certain music playing and like they lean into emotion. And I think us in the church, we are the exact opposite. We lean out of emotion. We don't trust it. We don't think it's healthy in a lot. Yeah, we kind of push it away.
Excuse me. We kind of push it away and treat it as though we should be skeptical of it. You know, I think emotion can take people away There is that possibility.
But I think we are doing ourselves a grave disservice when we are moving all emotion out. Because what we've created is a hyper intellectualized church where yes, you can know everything and feel nothing. I know God loves me, but I don't feel God loves me. I know that the Bible says right, but I don't feel like I want to do it. And so emotion is fickle. Emotion can come and go. I'm not saying we drive everything off of emotion, but there's a reason God created it. I think intellect and emotion have to come together.
We are not good at this in the church. So I think number five is emotion. What are your guys thoughts?
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think a lot of the reason why people struggle with this has to do with people within the church struggle with this is just due to sometimes just the way that our worship services are set up.
Generalizing here of course. But you know, your average Church of Christ worship service start out with the announcements already right off the bat it's like okay, you know, not going to necessarily have a ton of emotion there.
The singing, unfortunately again, you know, a lot of other denominations call it can. Can get the worship service wrong when it comes to singing.
But even when if we have it quote unquote right, as far as not using musical instruments, our singing can be and often is very emotionless. It's you know, song leader gets up there and you know, just kind of, we just kind of go through the service we're singing. Obviously a lot of congregations maybe don't have a ton of people and so you're not really getting much emotion through the singing. Lord's Supper comes and some people do a really good job of trying to take your thoughts back to the night Jesus crucified. Whatever it is, a lot of congregations don't. I've been to a lot of congregations where it's to get up, say a prayer, sit down, get up, say a prayer, sit down. Not much. You're not doing much to elicit that emotion. Sermons again can the kind of wide spectrum as far as what people preach on. But a lot of times I don't think the sermon elicits all that much emotion. Then you're down to the closing prayer and then you're done. So you've gone a pretty large percentage of the worship service without any.
Yeah. Anything being done to elicit emotion. And Joe, I think your point is interesting about why the church leans away from emotion. I would agree. I think sometimes we look at it and say, well that's, you know, emotion is not always a good thing. We should not be thinking emotionally. We should not be letting decisions be made emotionally and things like that, which, of course, I agree with.
But I do think that emotion needs to come into our worship quite a bit more than it does.
And when we think about that idea of worship, I feel like the worship to God, the praise that we bring to God, as we're singing some of the songs and going through the Lord's supper and all those things, I feel like those things should bring forth emotion that we should have. You know, there's. The other day I was sitting in the Sunday morning. We were singing. It was a song that just. I hadn't sung a lot before, but I knew the words and it sounded beautiful and like an emotion hit me. Like, man, this is just powerful. Doesn't happen to me a lot, and I wish it did more. And so as I. Again, I think about kind of the. The way I want to bring my kids up and the things I want to focus on them with. This is one that I feel like we're going to have, that I'm going to have to do a take. An increased focus on is making sure that they know it's okay to show some emotion. In fact, if you don't show any emotion at all during worship or in praise or anything like that, that might be a little bit more concerning than the person who might show a little bit too much. Jack, what thoughts do you have on this one?
[00:09:45] Speaker C: A lot of these on this list are going to be overreactions. Pendulum swings away from some of the things you guys mentioned that, well, these guys do this, these guys do that. And the ecstatic, the charismatic kind of thing of just really kind of going crazy in the worship service, we don't want to be like that. And, you know, even I kind of. And I'm not. I'm not trying to be too judgmental here. That's going to come off as kind of judgy. I kind of roll my eyes when you kind of see the concert footage of, you know, contemporary Christian music artists in the swaying and closing, you know, like. Like feeling it kind of thing. And it's like, okay, but why there. There is again, Joe, as you said. And I think sometimes that's manipulative. I really do. I think sometimes the. The way that's put on is meant to kind of like, give you that kind of spiritual, summer camp high kind of thing. But that doesn't mean you can't show emotion. But to. To bring in the point you just made there at the end there will, about feeling emotional, that is one thing we're okay with. If somebody is kind of moved to, you know, a silent tear in their eye, that's okay. The one we don't like is joyful, exuberant emotion, Right? And like, you think of David dancing before the ark with all of his might, like, okay, I'm not gonna do that. And I'm not saying we should be doing that. Dancing in the aisles at worship, on the other hand, that. That kind of joy that is, you know, even just singing with a smile on your face is something that maybe I don't do enough of. But, you know, being excited about God, being passionate, like, man, this is really cool. This is fun. Let's enjoy this. Let's. But, you know, as you said, come in the announcements. All right, we're going to sing song. You know, song one, song two, opening prayer, song three, Lord's Supper, and just go through the whole thing.
I don't know that. That you can't manufacture it. And I think that's kind of the thing I roll my eyes at is where people really try to manufacture it. But, man, it should come in somewhere.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: I feel like, yeah, again, it's not the enemy that we think it is. And I'm glad you made the point check. I was thinking the same about the overreaction.
It is just a pendulum swing from the holy rollers, as they say, you know, but you look at somebody like, you take a black church, you know, black congregations, man, they are singing out to God. And if you ever go there and you just listen to the music, just take a second, don't sing out, you know, just listen to the music around you. There is such a joy there. And, man, if I knew I was getting up every Sunday morning to go to that church and to participate in a worship that absolutely moves you, that gets the. Brings the best out of you. You find yourself singing a little louder, and you find yourself going out of there just energized and recharged and ready to go fight the battles. This week, like, we have to start thinking about worship as grounds for training people, grounds for getting. Preparing for war. Because we are in a spiritual battle, spiritual war for the rest of the week. And, yeah, there's got to be a rousing speech, as you have any rousing speech in the movies, and it elicits this emotion of, yeah, let's go out there, man, how often do you go to church and come out of there ready prepared for the week? Yes. Maybe intellectually, maybe prepared, but I'm talking emotionally, like, I'm pumped. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go do something big for God. Not very often in the typical church of Christ. I'm not saying it doesn't happen at all. So we're going to get people like, oh, what happens in my church? We're not saying it doesn't happen. By and large, having all the churches, the dozens and dozens and dozens that collectively we've all visited, I'd say, yes, we have a very strong problem with emotion in the church.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Just brief, briefly. I don't think he listens at all, but shout out to one of my brother's friends. His name is Cy Warren.
And when he leaves singing. It's been a while since I've gotten to listen to Cynic. He's one of the most talented song leaders I've ever seen. And, you know, he gives it his all when he's up there. He really tries to get everybody kind of excited. And I do wish we had more singing like that in the Church of Christ. The joy.
Last thing I'll say. And then, Jack, I guess I'll give it to you if you want to cover number four, if we want to move on here. But the last thing I'll say is, as you think about a lot of the songs that we sing, the way, I mean, music is meant songs and lyrics, and those things are meant and in a lot of ways meant to elicit emotion. You're meant to think about those words that are being said about how great God is, about the amazing sacrifice of Christ, whatever it is, fill in the blank based on whatever song it is, the Amazing Grace, whatever, for us to go through the worship service and just to kind of. I mean, we treat it like a chore. I feel like a lot of times we treat worship like a chore. Let's get through the. As Jack said, let's get through our standard first, second song, opening prayer. Let's get through the first and last verse. Let's get through our Lord's Supper. Maybe a chore is too strong of a word, but, like, there's not a lot of. I really want to be here, and I really want to worship and I really want to sing these songs. And so this is why I've made the point before.
Denominational individuals can do a whole lot better job of, like, worshiping throughout the week. You know, you'll. You'll hear them, you know, say, yeah, I was worshiping on my drive to work, or you know, we had a, had a worship night, whatever it is, on a Tuesday night. And obviously there's, there's things we could nitpick about that, but I don't hear a lot of people in the Church of Christ talking about worshiping God outside of the Sunday morning 10 to 11am hour. I think it's because again, it's treated like a chore. It's. It's not treated as something like we really want to do. That's where the emotion comes into me.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Joe, let me make one more point before we move on to number four.
Notice every single time people talk about the great parts of church, the great things that they did as a kid, you have the Diana singings, right? Something like that. Like everybody gets together and sing. You have the tent revivals going all the way back. You have summer camps for kids and you have things like youth events, lock ins or youth rallies or whatever it is. Every one of those is high on emotion. Emotions that stick with people, those are the things that stick with. Man, I wish we could just do that, you know, if we could just have a sing in there all the time, like. But why is that important? Yeah, the singing is beautiful. There's an emotion that comes with it. And it's almost like those are the only approved emotion times in the church. And everybody gravitates toward those and talks about how amazing they are. It's like, yeah, we could have that every Sunday if we just brought that emotion in and we allowed for that. We don't have to wait for one week a year where we kind of elicit it with the kids and get around the campfire and whatnot. It's great too. But man, we could do that consistently throughout the week and every first day of the week if we allowed that. I think we have a, you know, we have an opportunity here to really grow in this area for sure.
[00:15:51] Speaker C: So let's get into number four on the list. Number one was emotion. Number four is prayer.
And we do pray. Immediately somebody can say, well, what do you mean, prayer? We do pray.
It's the kind of prayer we do.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: It's.
[00:16:05] Speaker C: I don't know the nature of prayer. I feel like there's a.
Joe, you added this one because when you hear people from different groups, when you hear denominational people pray, there's a conversationalness, a familiarity there. It's much less, I guess, stilted sometimes. And I'm not all of them. It's not. Every Baptist prays better than every church. That's not what we're saying, but that sometimes it can just be rehearsed. Lines, structure is the same like learning to pray from things like the Psalms. Again, I brought up earlier with David, and you go to the Psalms and very much an outpouring of talking to God.
That.
And not just the way we do it, but then, okay, you got your opening prayer, you got your closing prayer.
We might have prayer night or a prayer meeting occasionally from time to time. And that's, you know, this guy gets up and prays about this, that, and the other thing. But prayer kind of just flowing out of us, I guess, as a natural response. Something that we're habitually doing together. It's not a. All right, we'll pray during the Sunday morning worship, and then everyone go home and have your own prayer life. But that. It.
I'm working on an idea on this. I'll talk about it here in a minute. But you look in the book of Acts, Acts 1, Jesus ascends. They get together and they pray. Acts 2, they baptize all the people. They get together and they pray.
They're persecuted. In Acts 3 and 4, they get together and pray. Peter is thrown in jail. Acts 12, they pray.
Paul is waiting on Ananias to come to him.
[00:17:30] Speaker D: He's praying.
[00:17:32] Speaker C: Prayer is just all throughout the book of Acts, of individual together, all those things.
I think on both of those, like the tone of prayer and the practice of prayer, there's definitely room for improvement.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: One of the things that got me thinking about this, our wives are, of course, in a Bible study group.
And there for a while, shout out Sissy. She's a listener to the podcast. Sissy is a good friend. And she had a friend that I think is Baptist, one of those denominational.
And they were inviting her, and it was great. Knew her Bible very, very well. But they're kind of studying and working on some stuff. And we had challenges with our fourth. And I had actually forgot about this. My wife and I were talking about this, and she reminded me that we thought he was gonna have to get a blood transfusion, you know, from the womb. We thought there were some serious things going on, and they were kind of running some tests. So I remember we were asking for prayers and kind of asking around, and Beth is the woman's name.
It was Alyssa. Was telling Sissy on the phone, and she went and told Beth, and Beth's like, well, let's just pray about it right now.
And that's. That's something you hardly ever see at church. Christ. I'm not saying it doesn't happen.
You hardly ever see that happen. But you can always just pray about it, correct? Well, we'll pray for you. And then how often do we forget? How often do we space by the time we get back home? Oh, I'm supposed to pray for them, right? So we say, we'll pray for you. And it's kind of just that blanket statement. She goes, no, let's pray about it right now. And while on the phone, they put it on speaker and she said the most beautiful prayer for our son and for Alyssa and for the pregnancy and everything else. And it was just right, boom, in the moment. Let's just pray about it. This is the way we take it to God. And you see this with people that they don't hardly take a breath without praying to God, without first connecting with him and going, let's pray about it in the moment. I've told the story before, but I remember being at Begin Against Institute, which is a sexual addiction place that I was working with, two week program.
And I remember we started a Boulder recovery they were starting, and I was able to be on the team with that one, which is distinctly Christian. And so in this one, they were incorporating prayer.
And I saw as every guy, there's a cohort of 10 guys, there'd be a guy really going through something, really struggling with the trauma, really struggling with whatever it may be. All nine guys would go and place a hand on him somewhere on his knee, on his shoulder, you know, on top of his head, just a hand on, on the body and say prayers for him. And just to see a 50 year old Titan of industry, I mean, you got these guys that are, they're loaded, man. I mean, they're, they are high flying, high powered guys and they're in this, breaking down in tears as they're getting prayed for and the hands are on them. And it was one of the most moving things I have ever seen in my life to see these guys that have gone from the worst of the worst sexual addiction to breaking down in tears and looking to change their life and recommitting their lives to Christ.
And this is all happening through the power of prayer and through the power of laying hands on somebody. We don't do that either. We don't do that either where we, you know, just putting a hand on somebody's shoulder, occasionally we'll do that. But like putting a hand on somebody's head or on their shoulder or, you know, on their knee or whatever, just let them know we're here. There's such power in touch.
And when we're praying to God and letting them, like, kind of feel that connection through us, prayer can be supercharged. Prayer can be a superpower.
And I just feel like we almost treat it as like the extra. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we're supposed to read our Bible and pray. Like, we don't appreciate prayer as the lifeline and connection to the Almighty God. We know that, we say that and we intellectualize it once again, is where the emotion kind of comes in. We have a tough time connecting with the emotion that prayer should and could elicit.
[00:20:59] Speaker D: 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 Wilke or me. Jack Wilke, reach out to
[email protected] if you'd like to talk to me or.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: If you'd like to talk to one.
[00:21:35] Speaker D: 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.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I think for me, kind of again, as somebody growing in the church of Christ, we pray when we are at the times we think we're supposed to. Right before meals, of course. Always gonna have a prayer before the meal.
If you're having some kind of get together, study, whatever you might pray to wrap that up right. Pray at the end.
That's about it. As far as outside of the worship service, you know, when do you think to pray? And then this is something that's a personal, personal area of opportunity, as they say in the business world, which is basically a fancy way of saying weakness area that you got to get better is finding just random times throughout the day to pray.
Not just moments of gratefulness and things that go well, but also just, I got a few minutes, I got time right now I just want to pray. Or to your point, Joe, get a text from somebody about something that, you know, something going on, health issue, whatever, instead of texting back imessage, all right, I'll be praying for you and clicking send and never doing it. Taking the time right then to say a 30 second prayer to God and to go before his throne.
You know, going on car trips, we got a road trip coming up here soon. Making sure that we make that a part of our trip is asking God for safe travels. And I don't know, I just feel like we miss thanking him on the back end.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Sorry. Yeah, that too.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I feel like we miss the opportunity a lot of times with, with prayer. And once again, with this being a personal weakness of mine, an area I'll have to really focus on with my kids is like, hey, pray anytime, pray all the time. We talk about pray without ceasing. Right first. Thessalonians 5. And you know, it doesn't mean he was praying 24 7. It just means he was always looking for times to pray. To Jack's point, I mean, they were, as a, as a church, they were praying all the time. But even individuals just kind of praying non stop looking, looking for the times to pray, taking advantage of the moment here and there. Again, the moment of thankfulness, the moment of sorrow, the moment of this fellow brother in Christ needs my prayers for something. So, yeah, I think this was a really good addition, I feel like. And you hear certain prayers in worship where guys, you can tell, they really do get it. It's like, man, that was a powerful prayer. That was a not, not a, you know, thank you for this day, thank you for my blessings, be with the military, be with the sick Jesus name. Amen type of prayer. It wasn't rehearsed. It was not, you know, the same kind of thing over and over again. It was deep, meaningful conversation with God and I don't know. Yeah, I feel like that's definitely an area of opportunity for the church.
[00:24:07] Speaker C: With Daniel, you know, having three prayers a day, I think that's a great thing to shoot for. It's a habit that takes a really long time to get in.
You know, right when you wake up lunchtime and then dinner time before bedtime, whatever it may be. But it's not that hard. It's just a habit you have to set up. The other thing I think is a really good tip is a prayer journal or a prayer app. I don't like the prayer app because that means I have to have my phone out when I'm praying. I kind of want to be away from my phone when I'm praying. So just buy a little notebook or whatever that helps. You kind of have. You can keep the list of the people you said to pray for, but also for yourself, like the things that you're praying for and qualities in Your life and your spouse and your kid, whatever it may be.
When you hear folks pray in church, and I'm not like, downing anybody individually or anything like that. This is a common thing of those kind of those, I don't know, rote prayers, the ones that kind of just say the same things or whatever. I am not as hard on those people because it's like they haven't been taught. You think about. This is like one of the central weapons of the Christian life. How often do we actually teach people to pray?
And so this is my big idea. I'm gonna really try and roll this out and get people. I've talked to some people about trying it. Hopefully some churches will.
What if we took either the Sunday morning class or the Wednesday night class and turn it into prayer training sessions? And what you do is you have a class, 10 to 15 minutes on a topic, teach what the Bible has to say about it, about being a good husband or father, about being a good wife and mother, whatever it may be, whatever your class is, go over what the Bible says so you know what to be praying about. Then break up into groups of four to six people.
And it needs to be men's and women's groups separated. And they're gonna pray together. And then next week they're gonna come together and talk about, hey, did you pray every day? Like, how did that go for you? And how can we pray for you on this end and share those things? So you get the discussion, but then you're getting people in a group to pray together and learn how to pray. I think most Christians are never even taught how to pray, which to me is ridiculous, is like, how can we.
It's like not teaching your kid how to eat.
How are we as churches letting this fall through the cracks? And so I think that's an idea I really would like to see a lot of churches pursue. I'm gonna, like I said, trying to put some thoughts together, maybe write something on and get it out there. But I love it.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:23] Speaker C: Because it checks off so many boxes. You're getting really close fellowship. You're getting discussion among Christians. You're giving application to the teaching. So it's not just like, oh, well, yeah, that's a great idea. What am I gonna do about it? Like, you're asking God, help me see what to do about it. And you're bringing God's power into the church in ways we don't usually use.
Not that you have to do exactly that idea, but something that gets Christians active in prayer in a Way. That's not just all right, one Wednesday night, a quarter you're coming and bow your head for an hour. Like that's nothing wrong with that. That's a great thing. But let's teach people how to pray.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: I love. That's like a worship.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: I think that's a good thing.
[00:26:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good thing. And you can just do it week by week, you know, a new topic every week, a new thing to pray for, a new, you know, checking in on. How's your prayer life going like that. I think that would go a really long way.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: And I also think we could do a better job of kind of. It sounds weird to say platforming, but like lifting up guys that have a really deep prayer life.
Use those guys. You let you know, how did you get there? What do you pray for? What does your prayer life look like on a day by day basis? You got people like that that could easily contribute to classes that we kind of throw them in there and then we kind of have the humility of, oh, I don't know nothing. No, no. It's like, no, we need the older members of the congregation to have strong prayer lives to come forward and go, this is how I do it. Here's, here's how to teach, you know, those type of things as well. I think that's a great, great idea. Will get us into number three. Yeah.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: So number three area for biggest church Christ struggles is one that I brought to the table and that is well rounded study.
Well rounded Bible study. This is kind of a, some, a drum that I hit repeatedly. But I feel like in the church of Christ we do a pretty good job. I mean we are very well known for our Bible knowledge or at least we used to be. Maybe not quite as much anymore in the church of Christ being known for our Bible knowledge. But I feel like we are pretty good as a general rule on certain things.
New Testament, we're pretty solid on we know words of Jesus. Obviously we're great.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: Especially Paul's letters.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Paul's letters were pretty great on worship, things like that.
Once you get outside that. And this is why I put. Or why we put well rounded.
I feel like a lot of members of the church Christ are pretty lost.
Go to the minor prophets. Hey, what is the book of Amos about?
What percentage of members of the church Christ could give you a synopsis about what Amos is about or you know, even go into the Psalms and the Proverbs. We know Psalm 23. We know Psalm 100.
It's about it, right?
Whether just kind of the corners of the Bible, you might say the things that maybe you're not going to necessarily get a four part sermon out of or you're not going to have a whole class on the book of, you know, First Timothy, of course you're going to have a class on that. But some of the other areas of the Bible, again, minor prophets, some of the questions about, you know, the Nephilim or some of the more, you know, things that it's like, man, this is really difficult. Like Jude for instance, Like Jude has a lot of questions surrounding, surrounding the verses in Jude. We don't talk about it a lot and so I think a lot of it is a kind of a fear of man. We don't really have a good answer on this, so let's just kind of stay away from it. I think this is a struggle for the Church of Christ. We know what we have a solid answer on, so we hit that like crazy. We know we have solid answers on the Book of Acts. So man, we teach Acts like crazy. We know we have pretty solid answers on First Timothy and the elders roles and women not speaking in church. So man, we hit that hard.
We don't really know much about the minor prophets or Isaiah. And I'm speaking to myself here, like I'm not saying I've taught a ton of stuff from the Book of Isaiah, but like, I don't know, I feel like well rounded study is a pretty good area of opera or a pretty large area of opportunity.
Pretty big struggle for the Church of Christ. Because a lot, I think a lot of people also have the tendency of like, well if it's not New Testament, if it's not Acts, it's just really not all that important. So let's just, let's just stick to what we know type of thing. Feel like the well rounded because you see guys in the denominations who they study this stuff and they have answers for it and that we in the Church of Christ don't. Joe, I'll go to you next. Any thoughts on kind of this idea of well rounded study?
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you completely that we kind of play the hits. We've talked about this from the pulpit. A lot of preachers are playing the hits where they just kind of go back to the same well. And so we can really grow. It's almost like a weird growth. We really grow in certain areas. So we have like this branch of the tree that's just really, really strong, whether that be the plane of salvation or whatever else. People memorize the verses and all of that, and that's great, we need that too.
But there's other withering branches that just never really see the light of day. And then there's the niche stuff that. Jack, you can get into this more because you've done a lot more work on this than I have. But like the typology and some really cool type Bible studies that we don't really get into. The types and the types and things like that that I think there's so much there. We've talked about basic ones, you know, coming through the Red Sea connected to baptism or coming out of Egypt and slavery right through the Red Sea connected to coming out of the life of sin and going into the, you know, where we are kind of wilderness, going to the promised land. Like. Yeah, I think there are parallels, no doubt, that are mentioned in the church. By and large, we miss that.
We don't really have that depth. And Jack, you've talked a lot about this as well. Our Old Testament will, to your point too, our Old Testament is very lacking.
We may, Excuse me. Struggling today. We may get into the law, we may get into Leviticus, we may get into something like that. And to talk about how to make lye soap, you know, some. Some Christian evidence and stuff, we don't really get into why that's important. Why is this in the Bible? What about the Book of Numbers? Oh, that's boring. Can we just skip that over? You know, we try to read through that as fast as possible in our daily Bible reading. Like, we're missing a lot in there if we're not really digging into it. That's why. Join Focus plus we did a full class on Exodus through Deuteronomy, so you'll have that full class present. But yeah, I think the by and large our Old Testament knowledge is really lacking because we look at it as well, it's not that important. And man, you missed some serious stuff. 39 books of the Bible. We kind of just for the most part toss aside other than maybe Psalms, Proverbs, Genesis and fun one like Ruth or something, you know, some Daniel stories, man, we just miss a lot of that depth. Jack, what are your thoughts?
[00:32:28] Speaker C: It really comes down to what you go to the Bible looking for. And if you're going looking for the outlines of your religious practices, that you're gonna be kind of limited. If you're going to the Bible looking for what do I got to do to get to heaven? Not that that's not in there. Not that you're not Gonna get that from it. But if that's all you're looking for, you're gonna kind of pick through and go, okay, this, this, this, and just. Okay, I don't really need the rest. If you're going to learn who God is, every page of the Bible has something for you and has something for you to dig deeply on. Not like the drive by, reach out and grab a proof text on. All right, this one says this about this topic I'm studying.
There is a place and a time for topical study, for sure, but in service again, of that bigger sense of knowing who God is, knowing what's pleasing to God, knowing what draws me closer to him. And so you're, you're not going to just view the Bible as that legal code we talk about, right? And as the. Yeah, it's just a list of things we're told to do. And so I've got to go sort that out. And that's.
There's that practice of establishing authority. And you see this happen of. All right, we're gonna get up and. All right, we're doing the Lord's Supper, First Corinthians 11. That tells us why we do it. So we're gonna read First Corinthians 11. All right, we're gonna give the contribution. First Corinthians 15 tells us why we're. We're gonna give the contribution. So we're gonna read that one. All right, we're gonna sing a song now. And Ephesians 5 tells us that's not why those verses were there. Yeah, like that's an application of those verses. But there's something so much bigger there. And I'm glad this one's on the outline. When we view the Bible that way as a what do I have to do Book, you're gonna just skim over tons of stuff.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: First Corinthians 16. So you didn't establish authority very well.
[00:34:06] Speaker C: Yeah, 15 is the resurrection chapter. What am I thinking?
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Well, first coming 16 anyway, that's not, not a great place to go for it anyway.
What I love the point you made, Jack, about getting to know who God is. If you just want to get to know God, if you just want to learn, the Bible is phenomenal. Like, if you just want to learn things you've never learned before, open up and study several, you know, a few verse section that you've never said. You will learn something, I promise. And that's the wonderful thing again, learning about God, learning about his Word, learning about Christ, whatever. Like the Bible is a resource. You will always have to go to, to get to learn. And again, if we just kind of hit the same things over and over again, we. Without much diversity, your learning is limited.
Your kind of horizon of knowledge is not expanded very well.
And Joe, I think you said before, and I love this goal of yours, that your goal is to have on every single page of your Bible some kind of like, note, some kind of something that you've taken out of that section.
I love that, again, every corner of the Bible. And so, yeah, this one makes the list just because I feel like, again, we're known, relatively speaking, for our Bible knowledge, but I feel like it's pretty, pretty. I wouldn't even say limited. It's. It's within certain sections of our Bible knowledge, but we could be way more well rounded.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: Well, and before we get to number two, can we also just say, I think we're also riding coattails of the past a little bit on that one. Well, we're known for our Bible knowledge, man. I've worked with a lot of teens in the church.
Not anymore.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: We're not passing on very well.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: We are not passing that on. We are not known for our Bible knowledge probably from the millennials and down of how well it's known and the scriptures that have been memorized. And you know how to study our Bibles.
Not really. So I think we're riding the coattails of the 50s and 60s church that knew it really, really well. This is why we talk about this so much on the podcast. We're losing those people. Not only do they not know their Bibles, they're not even in church. So, no, we don't know our Bibles near as well as we think we do because we're not passing these things down and we're passing topical study and not exegesis and we don't know context and things like that. The basics that I think need to be, maybe they're not basics. I don't know, they're like one level removed or one level up from basics. But we can do so much better. And we need to stop telling ourselves we've got it down. We've got it down. Like maybe the older generation does. We have so much work to do passing that down to the next generation of how to love God's word, not just know it. How to love God's word, man. We could do so much better. I'm going to use the number two, then I'm going to pass to you, Jack, because you are currently writing a, writing a book on this, which Is grace. Number two is grace. We really struggle in the Church of Christ with concepts of grace. My mom, I remember telling us that her father was a preacher, and she really did not understand the concept of grace until she was like 25 years old, I think, until she had left home, because it just wasn't taught. Hellfire, brimstone. That's kind of what you grew up with. And so this concept of grace, I think, is, as you mentioned, Jack, is over correction from the other side. We don't want to be all grace to the point of like, you know, you could basically live however you want, have grace.
On the other hand, I think we swung the pendulum to the other side of zero grace, of kind of works based. But again, you're writing a book on this and so you can kind of discuss the implications of this and why that's a struggle.
[00:37:26] Speaker C: Yeah, just yesterday I taught through a Bible class on the contents of the book that I'm writing. And a lady came up afterward and thanked me and said, yeah, my husband grew up in the churches of Christ, and I didn't. And when I came over, one of the reasons he had struggled with it as a kid and had left for a while was didn't understand the concept of grace. And she's like, look, I came out of the Baptist Church. We talked about that a lot. And you guys just don't. And so she was thankful. She was like, I'm glad you talked about that, because you guys in the Church of Christ. She is in the Church of Christ now. She's like, we need to talk about that. And you run into that everywhere. People just not familiar with the concept. I think, first of all, let's establish what the concept is. And as I write the working kind of definition I'm using of it, it's just God's disposition towards us, the disposition of a loving, benevolent Father who wants us to be saved. And so he's providing us the means by the death of Christ on the cross and all that he's done for us, the Spirit and everything else, to save us. And so that when you understand how much he loves you and wants you to be saved and how much he's doing, like all of that whole system he's put in place, that's what helps you realize, man, I'm not one tiny misstep, one mistake away from struck dead, going to hell.
And when I taught on that, somebody else came up after class and mentioned they went to a youth rally and the speaker put a big black spot on the board and Said, this is us and all of our sinfulness, you know, just nothing good in there. And then when you become a Christian, it's a white spot. There's no, you're perfectly clean. But you know what sin is, is a mark on that white spot. And so like, let's say if you're the old, the classic, you're about to die in a car crash and you cuss, there's a black spot on that, well, now you're going to hell. You're marked up.
You don't understand God's disposition toward you is the favorable one looking to forgive. You provided the means for your forgiveness, all of these things. So you don't understand grace at all. And that kind of teaching that was at a Church of Christ youth rally, that's really bad.
Everyone went out of there lacking assurance of their salvation, thinking, if I die at the wrong time, and I did one thing before I was able to ask for forgiveness for it, that's terrible. That's not what grace is about at all.
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[00:40:01] Speaker C: And things like that.
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[00:40:15] Speaker B: We probably could share dozens of stories like that. I have one very similar of kind of that same mentality, you know, you better, you better hope you've asked forgiveness for your last sin, essentially. But before you die.
And one of the things that I got to thinking about this because obviously this is, this is not new to us as far as this being something that the Church of Christ generally struggles with, that being grace.
Think about how cheap and kind of, I don't want to say useless, but kind of futile it makes a sacrifice of Christ. If saying one curse word that you.
Just because you're instantly killed in a car wreck, if that's going to send you to hell, how Much does that cheapen the sacrifice of Christ? Like Christ came down, lived as a human being, did not sin for 30, however many years, was crucified in one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable, was buried, was resurrected, ascended to heaven, all to allegedly wash us from our sins.
And one curse word that you didn't get to ask forgiveness for is going to completely undo all that.
When you kind of frame it in that light, it does seem like a pretty ridiculous position. And this is again, not an excuse to say, well, we just thankfully get to live however we want to because of Christ's sacrifice. Not at all. This is where. And man, we get real squirmy about this. It's where the heart comes in. This is absolutely where. Do you have a heart for God?
Are you seeking after God? Are you seeking to do what's right? And that idea of stumbling and of missing the mark is kind of the common definition of sin.
Are you actively rebelling against God or not? Because if you're not, for the most part, I do believe grace is going to cover you. Again, that's not. And that's why somebody who says, well, thankfully, I get to just live over. I want. They don't have a heart for God. That is a rebellion against God. To say, I get to sleep with my girlfriend before marriage because of grace, or I get to watch whatever TV show I want to watch because of grace. Like, no, you don't have a heart for God. That is a rebellion against God because you know it's wrong, you're doing it anyway.
[00:42:09] Speaker C: But continue in sin, the grace may increase, as Paul said.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Right, exactly. Or trampling underfoot, the sacrifice of Christ, whatever place you want to go to in Scripture. And so that's why I think for the majority of people within the church, man, that's not what they're doing. They're not watching whatever they want to watch because, oh, thank goodness for grace. Or again, and maybe some people are, but for the most part, they're not. And so that's where I think we can do so much better of a job within the church to reassure these people. Like, yes, you're good. But I think this is where we put so much doctrinal emphasis on being correct, being right, having it. Having our doctrine right and having the right answer on this, that doesn't leave much room for grace. And so for anybody to even say, well, you know, I might be wrong about this, we treat that as like, well, that can't be an option. You just absolutely cannot be wrong. And so which will get us into the next one, our number one biggest church, Christ struggle. But Joe, what other thoughts do you have on this, on this idea of us missing grace?
[00:42:57] Speaker A: I was just gonna say fear motivates really, really fast, but not long term.
So if you're running sustainable, right? Correct. If you're running from the bear, I will run faster running from the bear than I will run a marathon. I'm not going to do it as long I will burn out. Well, what do we see in the church?
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Christ?
[00:43:12] Speaker A: We burn out a lot of people and we lose a lot of people. So it's really difficult to keep them long term. Because this exact principle. If you are scared of going to hell, that will supercharge you. Getting out of sin as fast as possible.
Because I'm running from it, I'm really, really scared of it. Okay, that might be good initially. At some point we've got to turn it into, as I say, a bazillion times. What are you running? What are you running to? Not just away from.
We have to change the motivation. And this is where grace comes in. As we understand the motivation is different. We do things for Christ because he saved us not to be saved. We do it because we love him and because he's shown us grace already. We are righteous people, so we do righteous things. We are not unrighteous people trying to do righteous things.
That changes the game. And so it creates a longevity that I think we in the Church of Christ lack because we're trying to supercharge it as fast as possible by scaring people into submission, scaring people into obedience.
That works for a time, but it's the same as a kid. If you're still having to spank your 16 year old, you're doing something wrong because you're trying to create this sense of fear in him consistently. And what happens to the 16 year old who is consistently under the thumb and under fear at 18?
He's out and he ain't coming back. You have to develop the relationship in order to have a kid. Stay long term, stay close to the family, close to the parents, call them every, you know, every week and show up to the family holidays and things like that.
You have to have the relationship that's built. Grace is what allows for this relationship. And if we don't, we're going to continue to try to scare people into heaven. You can't get anything wrong, otherwise you're toast again. You may supercharge somebody to try real hard for a time. You will burn them out because Nobody can be in a fight flight response for their entire life. It's really not healthy. And that's what we're doing in the church. So we got to be able to reframe this.
[00:44:56] Speaker C: We really do.
[00:44:57] Speaker D: That's.
[00:45:00] Speaker C: If we don't. And that's what I started with my class with yesterday was raise your hand if you know you're saved.
People have a really hard time with that. Well, the Bible says you should know you're saved. And so it's by teaching grace and not getting it back to. It's all on my shoulders. It's all on me. To be 100% doctrinally correct. It's all on me.
No, that's really the. What this all comes down to is who is your salvation dependent on. Yes, there are things you have to do. Not downplaying that at all, but we've got this reflex. If I just read Ephesians 2. Eight, you're saved by grace through faith and that not of yourselves. Even in the back of my head it goes, wait, wait, what about.
[00:45:32] Speaker D: You know.
[00:45:33] Speaker C: And starts quoting other verses.
Don't do that.
Thank God for Ephesians 2.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: 8.
[00:45:38] Speaker C: And soak that one in before you go to the other stuff about where. Yes, he gets to two verse 10 that were created for him in. Good work. Yeah, all those things. Sure. But give thanks for Ephesians 2. 8. Before you go to anywhere else, just absorb that one first.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys, we're gonna have any time for our. Think fast. Let's go ahead and get to number one.
So just briefly by way of review, Biggest church Christ Struggles. Number five was emotion. Number four was prayer. Number three was well rounded Study. Number two was grace.
Number one is legalism.
No secret that this is a large struggle for the church of Christ. And a lot of it has to do with what I brought up a second ago. A little jump the gun a little bit. And that is our obsession with being right. Our obsession with being right. Doctrinally, our obsession with being right on every single issue.
Now, of course, I need to say our goal is to be right. We want to be right on every single thing that we can right. We want to be as close to right as possible.
Where legalism comes in specifically within the church is to me, binding things and making sure that we're right on things that maybe the Bible is not as crystal clear on. It's definitely okay. And we should be very legalistic about homosexuality being wrong, about baptism being essential for salvation, about the fact that women have no business leading in worship. That's crystal clear in scripture.
There are other things in Scripture that are not crystal clear. And we actually had a class recently on Romans 14.
I think a lot of stuff can get thrown into Romans, the Romans 14 category, as a quote, unquote, Romans 14 issue. That does not qualify as Romans 14 issue. But either way, one of the points that you can derive clearly from Romans 14 is that there are things, there are matters that the Bible does not really give a firm black and white ruling on. And so essentially, there are things. And Furthermore, in Romans 14, there are things that Christians can disagree on and neither has to change their mind on. You very clearly get that principle from His Word. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind about two completely different things in Romans 14. And so this is where legalism comes into play, is the idea that, no, you have to agree with me.
You have to agree with me on this. And again, I'm not talking about the issues of the utmost importance, the Trinitarian God, obviously, we gotta agree on that. Did Jesus resurrect like, yeah, we gotta agree on that. Baptism. Of course, once you get to secondary and tertiary matters, that's where the legalists will continue to have the exact same vigor and the exact same intensity that they have with things like baptism and homosexuality. They'll have that same vigor and intensity with the tertiary issue.
That's where we have to be very careful about legalism. Jack, I'll go to you first on this one. Why is this our number one? Why is this an area, once again, as we're raising kids in the Church of Christ, that we're gonna have to be very careful of?
[00:48:22] Speaker C: You just get this sense like that this is the most important thing.
And yes, it's important to get doctrine and beliefs right and all that, but that kind of precision, you've got to have 100% on your doctrinal test score, whatever the case may be with that.
And what you end up with is that concept of primary issues, secondary issues, things like that. And people say, well, that's not even a biblical concept. Like, so we can't even disagree on anything. There's literally nothing that anybody can disagree with me on, and we can still be in fellowship. Well, that's ridiculous. And so if, I mean, maybe somebody actually does believe that, I don't think they do. I mean, I think you can find one thing in the Bible that everybody can say, okay, well, maybe not that that won't send you to hell. All right, then, now you've established the concept of secondary issues. And if. If you only have one or two secondary issues and everything else is a fellowship, salvation issue, whatever term you want to use that's bad. That's the Bible, has to have some things that, like, okay, I wouldn't do it that way. I don't like that they're doing. I think it's even wrong that they're doing it that way.
But I imagine there's gonna be some grace for that if they're pointed in the right direction. Like, I can disagree with them on that and allow that to be. Yes, there are things where it's like, nope, I'm gonna draw the line right there. That's too far. Yeah, you do have to have those primary issues that you cannot cross that line. But if I'm gonna steal Joe's line before he gets to use it, if every issue is a primary issue, nothing's a primary issue.
[00:49:50] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. And hey, you're just. You're stealing Syndrome's line from Incredibles. But that's okay. It just happens to be one of the greatest lines in a animated movie anyway. This is why number two and one go together.
Like legalism and grace are.
They're just opposed to one another. If you understand grace, you're going to be a lot less legalistic just because you're going to understand Man, I need grace just as much as the next guy. And I know God's going to be overlooking certain things that I've gotten wrong that I don't even know that I'm getting wrong. And, you know, we're trying to do the right thing. But I realize there's, Man, I need grace every single day.
When you have that mindset, there's a humility to understanding that that the legalists just don't have. There is no humility. It's. You got to have it right. You got to understand these things. You got to know. And there's also. And this is the struggle. We've run across this, obviously, on this podcast, of things that people do not like that we say.
My struggle with the legalists is what is their way of bringing a brother around somebody that is off. Okay, let's. We were talking recently about New Heavens, New Earth, and somebody getting fired for preaching New Heavens, New Earth.
Okay. You don't have to agree with New Heavens, New Earth. Why in the world are we firing and blacklisting people from the church? And it makes everybody uncomfortable to have this. Why in the world is that taking place where you're getting blacklisted from multiple churches from speaking engagements and everything else. Well, it's heresy. Once again, we have taken a tertiary or, you know, a secondary issue and we've elevated it to the top and we kick people out rather than going to them Apollo style. Assume the best. Assume that these brothers are, are God fearing God honoring people that are trying to get this right. No, we have zero assumption that everybody's on the right path. We view everybody through. And by we, I mean the legalists view everybody through a skeptical lens. Everybody's just trying to pull one over. No, they're not. People are trying to get it right. And if they get something wrong, what is your mechanism of going and bringing a brother back? Is it an Apollo's just take him aside and go, hey, brother, you know, we're. I'd love to study this with you. What do you think about boom boom boom boom. And he can go, I've studied this myself and let's study it together. We can open it up and realize, wow, maybe It's a Romans 14 issue. Maybe you think I'm wrong in sin and maybe I don't. And both of us are trying to honor God. Can we let it go?
No, we can't in the Church of Christ because we are legalists and we have to have everything right.
I'm telling you, this is why we're losing a lot of people is somebody's going to look at that and go, I know I don't have everything right and if I'm going to hell because of it, I'm going to go to a place that accepts me. I'm not saying that's the right thing. Please don't do that. I'm not saying that's the proper mature response, but it is a response. And the legalists are kicking people out of the church and causing us to lose people right and left. That's not healthy.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: The refusal to let anybody be wrong is the key. When, when Paul in Romans 14 makes the, you know, basically says at least be fully convinced in their own mind, they're two people differing on different or differing opinions on the thing, guaranteed at least one of them or both of them is wrong. And Paul says, ladies, be fully convinced. Your job is not to make sure that they come over to your side or that they admit that you were right and they were wrong. Legalists just have a really hard time doing that. Joe, your point is really key. In the jacket. I'll hand it to you. If we want to rap or get into Think Fast or whatever it is, there's those videos that Go around of reels that are obviously very exaggerated of a homeschooler meets a public schooler for the first time. And it's like, I thought you were the devil. Or my mom doesn't let me associate with demons and stuff like that that, you know, very dramatic about. Kind of the, the perception of public schoolers.
[00:53:15] Speaker A: Right?
[00:53:16] Speaker B: I think that's exactly this same perception that I grew up with with people of a denomination. Like, those people hate God. Those people are just trying to do anything that they're just trying to get away with whatever they can. They just love entertainment. So that's why they listen to, you know, instruments and worship and they just, they're at. They just are actively rebelling against God. That's why they have women up there.
Listen, they're so wrong. But that's not, you know, that's not. That's not at all the way that they are. They are actively seeking God. And sure, they're sincerely wrong, but. And then similarly, even within the Church of Christ, somebody who disagrees about New Heavens, New Earth, or somebody who disagrees about xyz, we so often do. Joe is. I'm basically just echoing your point. But we so often do view it with a very cynical lens. Like, what are they trying to pull here? Like, they're skeptical, very skeptical. Like, man, I don't know about their heart type of thing. And it's like, listen, if it's.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: If it's.
[00:54:07] Speaker B: Take it outside the denominations and inside the Church of Christ, if it's a secondary, tertiary issue, let's assume the best. I love that point. Let's. And yeah, it doesn't mean don't talk about it, but, you know, at some point you may have to just say, well, I, I'm on this side, you're on that side. Let's continue to talk about it. But we can each be fully convinced on our own mind. We're still a lot of issues like that, but the legalist does not allow for. That is kind of the point.
[00:54:30] Speaker C: If we're gonna be the back to the Bible people. You can't yell at somebody every time they open the Bible and ask a question.
You can't shout them into silence. You can't cancel them. And that just gets this really ugly incentive. It just tells everyone, shut up, don't ask questions, don't study your Bible outside of what we tell you. Like, is that what we want? Because that's what you end up with. And so a very, very unhealthy thing. And so again, to wrap all five of These. I'll recount it real quick here.
Number five, emotion. Number four, prayer. Number three, well rounded study. Number two, grace. Number one, legalism struggles for the churches of Christ. This is not again to say, man, the churches of Christ are terrible. We can't stand them. That's not that at all.
We can do better on these things. We have a reputation on some of these things. And as I said earlier, to push a reputation back, it takes work, it takes time, it takes different habits. And that's all we're pushing for here, is recognition of these things and to do better.
All right, this week's Think Fast. We're going to talk a little bit of Halloween. And Joe, being our resident Halloween critic, I'm going to let you get us rolling on that. Take it where you want to go.
[00:55:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So actually, Will, it is your wife that was talking to my wife. I don't know that she's talking to you about this. I'm assuming you guys have talked about this, but Alyssa tells me on the drive home last night after we were meeting, yeah. Rachel said that this might be the last year for Halloween because things are getting so dark.
Thought, well, that's interesting. I don't know if you guys have talked about that or not, but it kind of hit me, you know, as I'm driving, you're talking about last.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: Last year for our family. You're saying last year.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: She said, okay, yeah, yeah, last year for Halloween. No, just last year.
Exactly.
Last year for your family kind of doing the whole Halloween and trick or treating, things like that.
Well, she's telling me this and we're driving through Dixon and I look to the left and here's a bloodied zombie. And then I, we go to the next house and here's like ghouls and tarantulas, you know, all over the yard. And like in this same context as she's telling me this, I'm just like, oh, man, that doesn't look great.
Is Halloween getting darker? And do you think that there is going to be the death of trick or treating in the next few years? Because I know a lot of people that are skeptical. Obviously, we don't celebrate it. A lot of people, though, that are very skeptical of going out and maybe wary, I'm trying to think of the right word, like they don't want to go out and trick or treat. And for good reason. People are nuts these days and you go to these scary houses with all the ghouls. And we were talking before we got on of the Michael Myers you know, with the mask and the chainsaw, somebody's got some dummy standing right next to a mailbox that in the middle of the night freaks you right out. You think a guy's watching you and your, your lights hit that white mask, what in the world, right? But there just seems to be more of a draw toward the dark, toward the demonic than ever before. As a kid, there used to be like the blow up dolls of the Minions or whatever it may be, and now it just seems like everybody's leaning into blood, guts, gore. So I'm curious to get your guys thoughts because obviously I'm skeptical and I've been out on it for a while.
Do you guys think it's getting darker and do you see trick or treating coming to an end in the next decade or do you think that there will be a resurgence maybe if we can get back to like, do you see it getting better?
[00:57:37] Speaker B: So my answer is I don't think that Halloween necessarily is getting darker. I think the world's getting darker. And so it is reflected in like we're way more conscious of it now. And maybe that's just speaking for me. But like it's been a, it's been a pretty heavy year, right? It's been a pretty heavy couple of years, I would say with, with COVID and the transgender movement that has just revealed so many nasty things, how social media brings it to light, not to mention the Trump assassination attempt, the Charlie Kirk actual assassination.
There's been a lot of focus on darkness and spiritual warfare and demons and all that. Well, then Halloween comes around, which from my perspective again has kind of always been like this. You could say it's maybe getting worse, but I just think we are seeing it in a different light now than we have before. And so is it getting a little darker maybe? I just think again, we're way more comfortable conscious of it. I know for me personally too, like having kids awakens you to a lot. I've said on our Halloween episodes. I, I, I used to really, really enjoy horror movies. I used to, I used to really enjoy going to haunted houses. I was never like a Halloween fanatic, but just kind of that adrenaline thrill rush of getting scared. I enjoyed and you know, got kids now and we're driving through neighborhoods and having my, my two year old daughter point out Halloween decorations that as I look, I'm like, I don't love that she is able to see that and pointing, of course she doesn't know what it is, but she's pointing at it and saying no, Halloween, Halloween. It's like, okay, I don't love that. And so that would be my answer to your, to your first question.
And then as far as trick or treating goes, I don't see that dying out either. I do see it getting less and less popular, for sure. Like parents that are like, there's a bunch of crazy people out there, let's just not. But like, I know our neighborhood's going to.
We are pretty wary of doing it within neighborhoods. That's why. Controversial, I know, but congregations that allow for Trunk or treat or whatever it is, we're going to tend to lean more that direction. And so I haven't talked to my wife actually about that comment, but I think we're just very wary and cautious of the influence that it has on the kids. And so I guess we really try to isolate the harmless things. The kids love dressing up. We want to make sure that they do. The kids love candy. My wife actually bought a bunch of dye free candy so that they don't eat all the junk that the stores give.
We love that stuff. The problem is as they get older and older, it becomes way more difficult to isolate those things. And so that's. I'm guessing, speaking for, that's probably the root of the comment is they're 4 and 2 right now. It's pretty easy to isolate as they get older and older. That's going to be pretty difficult to do.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: So outrage on the. Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:15] Speaker B: What thoughts do you have?
[01:00:16] Speaker C: The, the death of trunk or treating thing, that's a lot of factor.
[01:00:20] Speaker D: Trick or treating.
[01:00:21] Speaker C: I mean, that's a lot of factors of a low trust society, of these weirdos with their decor of all kinds of things. Like, I would not take my kids door to door in any neighborhood. I mean, I like my neighbors, but beyond that, I don't know.
And you just don't live in a world where that's possible anymore. And I think that's why the trunk or treats and the town square things and those kind of things have risen up so much in the last few years is to give that alternative.
And I think that's good as an alternative. But even at that, it's like, man, they got to police that really well. The guy that shows up wanting to terrify three year olds, like, come on, man, why, why do we do this stuff like that? Yeah, yeah. I've only been to one that was really well policed. And I think Rachel actually was saying this the other day. That there's.
Growing up was very much like certain things, modesty. And horror are not allowed. That's great. But if, if not that. And again, the downtown one, there's probably gonna be weirdos trying to scare kids and I don't know, there's so many issues that tie into this is what makes it interesting is our child free society.
Is our overgrown children, like adults that are, that are still trying to be kids. Like the Disney adults and things like that, that they, they remember loving Halloween as a kid so they just want to keep it going. And there it's like, dude, you're 38, have a receding hairline. Like it's over. Okay, you don't dress up anymore. You don't need ghouls, you don't need somebody, something bloody in your yard because you liked a Halloween movie as a kid. Like, stop.
But how do you, how do you pull this apart?
[01:01:49] Speaker B: That's my hot take is that if you're a grown adult and you're obsessed with Halloween, you need to find something a little more exciting to live for. And you probably need to re examine a bit. And you just said it, Jacks. Like the Disney adults, like, man, grow up a little bit, Joe.
[01:02:00] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's a. Well, the other thing that you were talking, Jack, a lot of social anxiety with kids. I mean, used to be like, yeah, you'd get out and you'd run the neighborhoods and be out till.
Till the streetlights went on, as they say. Yeah, we'd go down.
[01:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah, we did.
[01:02:13] Speaker A: Growing up.
Yeah, we played football and play all sorts of stuff. And nowadays, no, I mean, no chance I'd send my kids out there. So the idea of going door to door with kids, are you outside your mind?
Absolutely not. I don't know what's behind those doors and that's terrible. But like low trust society. Jack's point is very valid. We live in a low trust society and that's why I could see it dying out. And the trunk or treats people aren't religious and I'm pretty sure, well, maybe the Catholics do. I don't know, like those that are gravitating toward those types of churches. I don't know that they're doing those. The trunk or treats maybe, but there's a lot of unchurched people that they're going to be down to basically the town square one. And that's about it, I think. And so I don't know. I do see it dying out to some degree. I see the parents that had a great time that are trying to get their kids involved with it. It's just not the same. There's the magic that was there, no pun intended for Halloween, but the magic that was there, I think is just gone. And man, it does seem to be getting darker to me. And so, yeah, I'm, I'll say this.
[01:03:11] Speaker C: As my last thought.
I'm not big on my own generation. The millennials. And the millennials were the ones that maximized Halloween as an adult holiday. And the older we get, as I say, we of starting to hit the 40s and stuff like that, it's getting really cringy. And I think people are realizing it's getting cringy. I think the fervor that there was even 10 years ago is dying down a little bit. And so I hope that kind of thing is, is kind of starting to wean to, I don't know, wind down a little bit. So that's my thought on it.
[01:03:42] Speaker B: Good stuff.
[01:03:43] Speaker C: All right, that's going to wrap right there. That'll be our Think fast. As always, the thing fast goes up first. So if you're watching this and keep an eye out for the Think Deeper episode coming on Monday, which is the top five struggles that the Church of Christ faces. So I think, you know, obviously if you're not in the Church of Christ, it might not be of interest to you, but I think it might. I think there's a lot of parallels for other people, but most of our listeners are in the churches of Christ. So I think that one will be of great interest to you. So keep an eye out for that on Monday and we will talk to you guys on the next one.
[01:04:28] Speaker D: Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate. Thanks again for listening.
