Why Church and Zoom Don’t Mix

Welcome to ClearCast. ClearCast is a ministry of Clearnote Church in West Indianapolis. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman. I'm here with our producer, Martin, and of course, Pastor Dave. And so last time we talked about the importance of pastoral care. And so today we want to talk about the church and some of the other things besides just the work of the pastor and the elders in particular, and the things that they do to you in particular. We want to talk about some of the other aspects of church. So to start this off, one of the things that has become very popular the last few years is virtual church, where people can consider themselves to be a member of a church, even if they don't ever physically darken the doors of that building. And so, Pastor Dave, what would you say is the problem with the virtual church as a model?

There's a lot to be said about it. Before we talk about that, though, as you were talking, I was just thinking, there's going to be a group of people we're listening to where you say virtual churches become popular and gain traction, and they're going to be like, nuh-uh. Like, that's awful and terrible. And I'd say, yeah, you're right. There is a group where it's not popular. But you have to realize that the propensity to become a little ghetto. wherever you're at, to just sort of always be circling the wagons around your priorities and realize that the rest of the world or the rest of the Christian world or American evangelicalism or whatever doesn't share all of your little quirks. And so while you might not think virtual church is a thing and you might hate it and you may have just have all of your ducks in a row about it and know why that's bad, you need to realize there are a lot of people who...

are sheep without a shepherd and who have been, have ended up in places that have been led to places that they didn't intentionally, like they didn't set out and go, this is what I think is good and wise. They actually were going along with people, following the herd, doing what everyone was doing. You know, virtual church became popular really, you know, through the pandemic. And, but it's been around for decades, not in the form that people watch church from home though, there are YouTube channels and different things like that. But like, if you think of like multi-site church where people would go and there was no pastor or at least the guy preaching was on a screen and not in person, a satellite church, like, but it's funny if you think about it, that, that now given where we're at today, where people do virtual church, they sit at home, they do whatever you're wondering, like why in the world, if you had the capability to.

you know, send your feed to a campus. Like, why did you buy another building? Why did you go to all the trouble of having these people, creating a space for them to come to? And then to the people, you're like, why did you bother leaving if you were just going to go watch a video? Like, now we all just sit at home and watch the video. You know, I mean, we don't necessarily, but it's become commonplace to sit at home and go, like, we went to church. I had a conversation recently where... The guy I was talking to said that he had been, his church attendance, he considered virtual church as having attended church. It was a discussion of whether they had been to church. And he said, yeah, well, when we can't attend in person, we attend virtually. And it was the same in his mind. And I was left being like, are you kidding me? This is not the same thing.

And what he said was, oh, well, we sing when the congregation sings, we sing. And when we pray, we pray. And when they say amen, we say amen. And when we kneel, we kneel. And I'm just like, did you dress up for church too? I remember in a recent elders meeting, we actually had this discussion and we were all just kind of sitting around the table, just kind of laughing at each other and sort of getting out onto the table. Like, what did you do? when we were shut down for a few weeks. I know what I did. I had to come here and preach to a camera, which is the most, like this is podcasting, but at least there are real people here. Like when I had to preach to a camera and like mean it, I've never had to do anything like that. That was so strange. So I never had to sit at, like figure out what to do at home personally. I had to figure out for my wife and my kids. But it was interesting to listen to people talk about like, oh, well.

we didn't dress up for church. We didn't get dressed for church. But other people in our elders meeting, some of them were like, yeah, we did. We made sure we got dressed for church. And I was like, but you're just sitting on your couch. And other people were like, well, we would stand up when you said, when the congregation was standing, we would sit down. And I was just like, you guys are so weird. I don't understand because it's just the experience is... consumeristic. It's so hard to have buy-in over a screen. I mean, you think of the difference between a work meeting where it's a Zoom meeting versus an in-person meeting. There's way more engagement in person. With Zoom, it's like, what do you do? You click the little raise your hand icon so that the moderator can see that you're sitting there with your hand up. And so this whole idea of virtual church, you have to think, how did we get to a place where this would be a viable option?

And I think it was that church became consumeristic, that you came to church to consume whatever was on the menu that day. So the music was to be consumed. The teaching was to be consumed. The prayers were to be consumed. And your job was simply to show up when you wanted, if you could, get your cup of coffee, come sit down. Relax. But things like participating in the singing, no. The music is more performative. It's not congregational. The prayers, do we say amen? Do we not say amen when it's over? At our church, we have creeds. We have confessions. We're going through the Westminster Confession right now, or catechism. And it's a question and answer format. So the congregation.

recites the answers. Is the preaching something that you're supposed to... Is it a self-help talk? Yeah. Is it self-improvement? Success tips. Success tips, yes. Seven ways to be a better human or whatever. Or is it something that's meant to get at your conscience and to get it... We're talking about what is church life like? And I think we have to start with... Like this virtual church thing, like I'm sitting here looking at it like my eyes are going sideways because I'm like, who in the world would do that? And think that this is good for your soul, that this is spiritual food. Like microwaving a TV dinner is better nutrition for your body than this is for your soul. I just don't think it's good for you. I think of it as like if you wanted to learn how to box.

Um, virtual church is like sitting at your house and like putting on the boxing gloves and punching it in the air. I wish you guys could see this image versus, uh, of, of Tim shadow boxing. Or, uh, versus like, if you actually show up in person, it's like going to a gym and like actually hitting a person and getting hit. Yeah. And it's the contact that makes the difference. You can get a little better at boxing. Maybe if you sit in her house and you shadow box the air. And, but you're, it's not, it's like in the words, the words of Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth. And that's the difference that you just, you simply can't, you can't make spiritual progress. You can't grow without having contact without it.

Like it has to be a context for it. Yeah. Yeah. You're describing embodied selves. Like we're not disembodied souls that can be helped through virtual. Like as long as I see it on a screen, then it's good for me. Yeah. It's the fact that everything about our worship involves our physical selves engaging in the service, receiving the word. receiving communion, standing, sitting, kneeling. When we pray a prayer of confession in our church, we kneel in our seats. And all those things involve physical actions and the awkward interaction with other real humans who will sometimes frustrate us, sometimes hurt us, sometimes love us and hug us and help us. But you can't get any of those things through a screen or through a VR headset. But to often worship in other places, like It ends up being functionally virtual, even if you are coming, because you can come and go without actually engaging. Yeah, and that's just really sad to me. I mean, there's a lot of arguments. There's been a lot of talk about virtual church and all these kinds of things. And what's just sad to me is that men would lead, shepherds would lead their sheep in that way. They need you. Like, I feel...

My wife understands, my family understands, our church needs me. Our elders understand that our church needs them. And so I think this whole virtual church movement is not really the point of the discussion today, but is born out of this idea that we don't come to church with any needs. We don't come to church expecting to meet with God. Now, what's interesting is there's a lot of talk about the experience, that actually we come to church to have an experience, to experience God. There's some churches nearby here that that's their goal. I had a pastor say to me one time here in Indy, he said, I was talking about it being our first Sunday in our new building and I just had a long week and having to prepare to preach and teach and all these different things. And he goes, well, And he's older than me. He's been pastoring, you know, decades. And he said, well, you know, people will just be so excited to be into the new building and all that. He says, you really just don't need, you just won't need to have much content. And I was like, wow. You just said that. I can't believe you just, yeah, like you said that. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, we have a difference of opinion here. Like I feel compelled to feed the sheep that when, you know, Jesus implored,

Peter, do you love me? Yes. Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Tend my sheep. And that is something that happens primarily at church. And it's interesting in different stripes of Christianity how that care happens. What you're talking about with being physically present, it takes me back to, This was a couple years ago now. But my wife had a miscarriage, and it was a very difficult time. And so Pastor Dave and his wife came over to our house that night. I'm sure he had other things to do and just canceled his plans and came over. And I think about if he had tried to have a Skype call with us instead, it would not have been the same.

Right. It would not it would not like I would have I think I would have come away from that saying, no, I needed you to be here. And that's a really dramatic example. But I do I would encourage everyone to think about how much more does that embodied aspect come into play? Like it in a thousand different little ways, like even outside of crisis mode, like. Is it possible that maybe we just need to physically be there in less dramatic circumstances? And that maybe there's a reason, like, when Scripture commands us, like, don't forsake the assembly of the brotherhood, maybe there's something, maybe there are reasons that God gives us that command that we don't grasp as quickly or as easily. Like, I think of, we were only shut down during COVID for about five weeks, and when we finally...

uncancelled or got rid of the virtual church thing. We were all just so relieved. And I think a lot of us had not thought about how much we needed to be physically with God's people. Or we hadn't thought about it very well. And it was a revelation to us, like how much we needed to physically be there in person. And what I would, my challenge to you as the listeners, just to consider that like, maybe there's more down that path, that there's more reasons you need to be in church beyond just the ones you thought of during COVID or after COVID. And so that would be my challenge. The other thing I would want to bring into play here is that if you think about what's going on at church, the goal should be not just to have an experience, but to be molded. And so can you talk about how the life of the church might mold?

uh, people into the image of Christ. Well, I think that we have to learn. I think when you come to church, how the way it shapes and molds us is that it shows you things you didn't know about. You didn't know you needed. Yeah. There there's, there's connections that you make that you wouldn't have made. Otherwise you've mentioned before, like you said to me about our church, you're like, I've, I've read the Bible. What I need is somebody to tell me how, what to do, what I need to repent of. how to live. And I think it's a really simplistic way of describing it. But what we need is to be instructed. We actually need instruction. And I think one of the things we don't realize is how much of our entertainment is instructive. When I was a kid, there was a point in which I was not a good kid by any stretch of the imagination, to the extent that even like there were times, at least I remember one time where my mom called the police on me.

And, uh, the cops came and she told them to take me away. Oh, wow. Like I hadn't done anything like worthy of being taken out of the house, but she was just, she was just done. Like I'd had interactions with the cops a few times. And this is like an elementary school. This is not like high school, bad kid. This is like bad elementary school, Dave. And, uh, you were already tall, her taller than her by this point. I wasn't, my mom's actually quite tall, but I was close. Um, wow. No. But there was a time where my mom understood something. I came home one day, and all of my CDs that I had bought, dozens of CDs, which is just like hip-hop, rap, that's what I listened to, it was all gone. And there was no explanation. There was no nothing. But it was just like this big stack of CDs was gone. And so I go to my mom, and I'm like, Mom, where am I? She's like, I got rid of him. And I mean, so we had a problem.

You know, there was a, you know, not a physical problem. Like we had a, we had like, where'd you take, like, I'm like looking, it's like I threw them away. So immediately I go to the trash to try to find them. Well, she hadn't thrown them away at our house. She had taken them to work and thrown them in the dumpster. And I was so angry. I mean, just live it. And now there was a money aspect, you know, to buying the CDs and stuff. But that wasn't the thing that was on my mind. The thing that was on my mind was, why would you do that?

Well, why would she do that? Because she knew that the music I was listening to, which is entertainment, was influencing me, shaping me into a miserable son, to put it plainly. The kind of son that a mom would call the police on and say, take him away. I don't want him to be here anymore. To where she had a note stuck up on the wall in the kitchen that had, there was this, and for all I know, she made it up. It didn't even exist. There was an organization called Tough Love, and it was a place to send problem kids. And she had the phone number written underneath it, and it just stayed on the wall near her spot at the kitchen table for like two years. Oh, wow. Because she really was serious about like, I'm going to get rid of you. You're terrible. And I don't know if that was a bluff or if it was real or whatever. I never did go anywhere. But you really are shaped by so much around you.

And I think Christians don't take into account how much of an impact that has on them. And you can remember, I graduated high school in 2000. I didn't get my first cell phone until I was out of high school. I remember walking into the Sears store at the mall and going up to the little kiosk and getting my AT&T phone, like the Nokia brick phones from back in the day. There was no digital screen. There was no internet. There was no email. There was no pictures. There was no texting. It was literally just a cellular phone. And that's all it did. And I was still inundated with pressures and teaching and expectations and desires. How much more so today? And so when you get together at church, you're being taught. You're being instructed. But that teaching is over.

It's in the context of you being taught and instructed and pressured every other minute of the week through social media, through work, through entertainment, through music, through movies, through whatever it is that you're consuming. And so when you come to church, that same sort of thing is going on. The question for the church is, are you going to try to compete with all of these other influences? Are you going to try to have music that's as... as compelling or interesting or exciting as the music that the world has to offer? Is the experience of church going to try to compete with the experience of the world? I mean, you can think of Christian music as compared to secular music, and it's generally not as good. Right. And I don't just mean they aren't as good at playing the guitar or the drums. I mean, the substance is not as compelling because it's not as provocative. It doesn't push. Yeah.

Now, there is some Christian music that does push and does demand something from you, but most of it doesn't. Christian entertainment. It's just this, like, milquetoast version. Right. And I'm afraid that when you come to church, you get the same thing. You get this, like, watered-down, nice, palatable version of Christianity that— Like a business conference, almost. Well— We started this with a discussion about virtual church and why that doesn't work and so forth. And I guess I'm just, as I'm sitting here thinking, I'm thinking of the fact, okay, so I almost intro'd us with this comment. Maybe it will still be an intro. Tim is my best frenemy. I've introduced him as that. Because Tim and I, like it's become this standing joke that we argue quite a bit. He's wrong a lot, okay?

And if we didn't have the relationship built on real life connections, on eating meals around each other's table and being together at church, if our only interaction was online, I seriously don't think we would be friends at all. Right. Because the tenuousness of the connection would not bear the weight of the differences and disagreements. Right. But that's not the only place that shows up. And what we don't realize is if church... The physical act of going to church creates an environment in which I am able to be shaped in ways that I don't always like, but that are genuinely good for me. When I'm listening to a podcast or watching a sermon or whatever, it's way too easy, even whether I don't even mean to. Like, pick my phone up or switch tabs on my browser or switch apps.

If it just doesn't grab me just right. And it can create a person who just constantly needs to be, you're talking about entertaining music and compelling music, the music your mom threw in the dumpster for you. I'm sure that music in that day, you actually probably liked better. And it had more of a grip on you than any music that you listen to now, possibly like that. That music was, I don't know if you were a big music guy back then. Yeah, I was. I mean, my appetites have changed. Yeah. Yeah. In terms of what I'm sure. I just mean at that age of your life, like oftentimes for a teenager or an elementary school kid, like music is life. Like the headphones are on and you're just like, don't realize how much that's shaping you. And now there are many times where you're being shaped by things that maybe you don't.

They don't compel you in the same way because they push back against your sin. They confront you in your weaknesses and your mistakes. And I hope that Tim and I both have become better people because of church. And church has been the context in which our sins were confronted. I mean, church is where you and I got in an argument in the vestibule, like in the entryway of the church. And Park walks by and goes, I don't think this is the first thing people want to see when they walk into church here. And that was a sandpaper moment. That was a moment when it confronted me with, look, you're actually kind of rude and antisocial right now and you need to stop. That wouldn't have ever happened in virtual church. That wouldn't have ever happened outside the context of the community. And it included both me and Tim being there in real life. And also our friend Park, who's like more than 10 years younger than me, but had the wisdom to say, hey, stop.

Like, don't do that here and now. And that's what goes into the shaping experience that is the church, the community and life of the church. Right. And I think something about this, too, is it's important to be able to interact across generations as well. So, like, Martin is dealing with people who are in a completely different generation because of how old he is. And so. You did that whole segue just to put that joke in there. Like, that was the whole point. You can cut it out. I'm all like four years older than Tim. He's much more than four. It's like four years and some months. Maturity, yes, but I mean actual chronological age. Anyway, but yeah, I think being able to interact across generations is helpful. And that's the kind of interaction that you don't normally get outside of church. And one other point to kind of tie back into what Martin was talking about is that I think when we come to church, there's a sense in which as the gathered body of Christ, we are being transported spiritually into glory. So I remember vividly whenever I heard – I was at the Shepherd's Conference, I think it was last year, and the teacher was talking about what John Calvin taught about the Lord's Supper.

It blew my mind. So in Roman Catholic doctrine, the priest actually pulls Christ out of heaven and embodies him in the wafer. And that's their transubstantiation doctrine. The Lutherans would say that the body is in, with, and under the elements of communion. And what Calvin says is it's not that Jesus comes to us. It's that through the eyes of faith, we are transported. spiritually, into heaven to be with Christ, and he is giving us the elements through the work of the elders as they give us the elements of communion. And so there's that, when you come together as the body of Christ, there is a transcendent element that you get to touch in a way that you never will on a screen. That transcendence is never going to be there, and that transcendence is also never going to be there when you're alone.

And so there's a completely different thing that's happening when the church, as the church comes together to perform what are on paper very ordinary things. Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking like even as you talk about it, you're making it sound like there's like magic or something extraordinary, but really it's very ordinary things that we're doing and very repetitive. Routine. Routine, yeah. I mean, we have a liturgy. that we follow. And you may not know what the songs are, what the scripture readings are going to be, or what the point of the sermon is going to be, but you can pretty well map out what we're going to do every week. And it's through those things that all of this extraordinary work you're talking about happens. And I think there's a danger in thinking that you have to do something extraordinary.

extraordinary to meet with God, to grow, to become mature, to be taught. And really, I can't remember where I heard it one time. He said one of the most, the most, the best indicator of spiritual health or your children coming to faith is simply being in the same church, like going to church consistently to a church to, to a church that's doing their work and teaching you for your whole life, that that's the best indicator that, and having dinner together every night are the things. And those are, they're really ordinary things. It's like, Oh, it's having what, what miraculous thing is going on as we're having dinner every night as a family for decades. There's really probably not a whole, probably a lot of macaroni and cheese and hot dogs and spaghetti and chicken nuggets and frozen pizza.

And pot roast. And yes, statistically, that's one of the best predictors of families that eat together every night, right? Yeah. Statistic predictors of closeness in the family and family staying together over the long term. Yeah. And so there's no magic in that. Yeah. But the results are really good and really desirable. And the same is true with churches. It's like if you come to church expecting an experience. I remember when we bought this building, the church we bought it from had moved out. They moved their Sunday morning services out of the building a few years before we bought it. And they had their youth ministries still here. And so on Tuesday night, they have a youth worship service. When we come into our sanctuary, and our sanctuary has a vaulted ceiling, nice wood ceiling, laminated wood beams.

It's a nice sanctuary. And what was in the room was, the things that struck me were a few things. One, how dark it was. The room was so incredibly dark. We changed all the light bulbs and made it as bright as we could. There were smoke machines. There were strobe lights. There were these enormous speakers, subs that sat right on the floor, right in front of the stage. and shook the room when they were on. There were the red, green, and blue filtered spotlights that would shine up on stage, and the whole stage was black. The whole back wall was just blacked out with landscape fabric, which was really ugly when the lights were on, but there were never any lights on, so you couldn't tell how ugly it was.

And I just thought, what in the world? It was the kind of place you'd walk into. If you could get past the wood beams and the wood ceiling and just look at the stage, you're like, this is set up for a battle of the bands. Because that's what they did every... That's how they reached the kids is they had loud music. And I just thought, this is not what church is supposed to be. You're trying to provide this huge experience, but this is not what the kids need. And so what was surprising was when they... When we bought the building, they took all their stuff out and they stopped meeting here. And the majority of those kids, they didn't have any hook to them. They lost them all. And all of this work about trying to provide an experience and an encounter with God, as soon as there wasn't loud music every Tuesday night, there was nothing else. There was no lasting substance.

I remember when I was growing up, there were a bunch of kids who came to youth group every week and maybe came to church on Sunday, but they'd be at youth group every week. And then as soon as they aged out of youth group, they stopped going to church. Yeah, they were gone. And the reason for that is that they were never coming for church. And like what you're talking about with the experience, I think so much of it is that a church can't be like your regular life. It has to be different. It should be a little weird. There should be a strange element to it. Even if over time those weird things become routine for us, like there should be that strange element to it. We're stepping outside of our normal life, and we're going to take an hour and a half and try to get in touch with God.

I just, what went through my mind as you were talking about the youth group leaving once they aged out, and your mention as far as the kids that didn't stay, they had this great experience. But 1 Corinthians 1, 17, Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. And that verse has convicted me so deeply before in recognizing Paul was saying it can't be both and. Like he couldn't have a clever, well-polished sermon and have the power of the cross of Christ, that he had to have one or the other. And I think that's true with church. When we talk about ordinary means of grace, which is what we have written down here, just the discussion of the fact that communion doesn't look like a magic moment. We don't have fog machines that go when we start serving communion. We don't have like disco ball or disco lights that start going off. It's a really humble.

ordinary moment with bread and wine that is not particularly delicious. It's not, but yet the scripture tells us that something special is happening in that moment. Yeah, I think that we just want a lot of, as a society, we're prone to the highlights of life and the same things come into our spiritual life. We just want this next spiritual high. And it reminds me of when Naaman was sick. in the old testament you know and he says oh there's a prophet in israel why don't we go see him and he goes over there and wants to be healed of his leprosy and they say to him well you know what he says well what i'm really paraphrasing here right what do i have to do it's like uh go down to the jordan river and dip yourself in it and go home and naomi got really really upset at the he's like well if i if you had told me to go kill you know a thousand

or do some miraculous thing. This is what his servant says to him. He's like, if he had told you to do this impossible thing to be healed, you would have done that. Like, why not do the simple thing? And so he goes and he does the simple thing. Like, it's instructive that he did not want to do the simple thing. He was willing to do an extraordinary thing, so he thought. But the simple thing, he was like, no, I'm not willing to do that. And so like church attendance, being involved in person with people who know you every single week. adds up over time. And, and so, but these, these basic concepts are lost on people today. They don't understand the value of corporate worship and it's easy to sit in church and to be a consumer and to think of what they didn't, you know, that they, that it's not as good as fill in the blank, whatever you don't think it's as good as. I think the church, I saw a quote that said there.

I saw a quote that said, there are no extraordinary means of grace. There's just ordinary means of grace. God works through those simple things. Yeah. And so when it comes to church, I don't know how to describe. I remember saying to a couple one time, they were at our church. They came to us at a, they were engaged and they were, I don't know how they found us. They must have found us online. They just, they showed up. Super sweet couple. Love them to death. And they came to church. I did the premarital counseling. They got married. They went through a really difficult. They lost a baby. And then they ended up pregnant with twins. And then I find out that they're moving. They're moving away from Indy. And it's like there's two things going on. One, I'm just sad because I love them. I was going to miss them. They still come and visit. We still have a good relationship. But I remember saying to the husband,

I said, you have to find a good church where you're going. And you shouldn't go if you can't find a good church up there. And he says, oh, we'll find a good church up there. There's good churches. We've been looking around because that was something that we had talked about. I talked with them about being in there as they were here at a church. And I said to him, I said, but here's the danger. You have to remember this. And this is what I said to him. I said, you have to remember that when you came to us, you were not the man and the woman that you are today.

Your marriage and the growth that you've experienced is a result of the ministry of this church. And so, in effect, you've built up some reserves. You've gotten instruction. You've had a season of growth and blessing and provision. If you go away, you're going to live off those reserves for a couple of years. And then you're going to realize that you're spiritually... You don't have the things you need. And I said, if that happens and you can't, if you need, that's why you need to find a church, a good church so that that doesn't happen. And so fast forward, you know, a year, they have twins, there's COVID, all this other stuff. And they came back and said, it was so much harder for us to find a church than we thought it would be. Like it took them over a year to find a good church. And they were trying.

But they go to churches. One of the churches they went to, they described, they're like, we tried. This particular couple is very social. They just jumped in with both feet. And they were trying to get together with the pastors and the elders of this other church, trying to have fellowship, trying to build relationships. And the church just, that just wasn't part of what they did a whole lot. It was a smaller church. They were really spread out. But this young couple was willing to drive. They're like, we'll drive 45 minutes to get to your house. And the church wasn't interested. And so they bounced around and they said, oh, well, good churches shouldn't be hard to find. And they go read doctrinal statements. And it's like, it's pretty easy to put together a good doctrinal statement, but it doesn't tell you about the life of the church and about the involvement of the church members with each other. You've just got to go and experience that. You have to live life together with other Christians. And it's through that life together that you'll become more like Christ. Like if you look at Jesus' life in ministry, the only time he was alone.

was when he went into the wilderness to be tempted. And even then he had the word of God with him, right? But all the rest of his life in ministry, I mean, he's tired. He wants to rest. He wants to recline. Even when he says, okay, in the garden, I'm going to go pray. He takes disciples with him. He's like, come with me and pray. Like he was always with other people, other, his disciples, people, healing them, teaching them, whatever. And it should be our life that we are with other Christians in person, personal. with them, dealing with the tensions and conflicts that come around. And we should, and it's not just any old Christians that will do. I mean, it's, they feel kind of proprietary, but it's like, you should make a priority of your church family. Like, you need to be salt and light in the world. You need to have relationships that are outside of your church. You will inevitably through work or kids' school or whatever. But the people...

In your church, you need a church. You need to know the people in your church. You need to be involved in their lives. They need to be involved in your lives. That means there's going to be friction sometimes. That's okay. You work through it. Get help if you can't. But the value of being involved in the lives of other people, I don't know how to assign a value to that in terms of your spiritual growth and your spiritual well-being. You know, it's, you know, when God said to Adam, you know, with regard to a wife, he said, it's not good for man to be alone. Like then he gave us, you know, the Eve is the, the wife is the sort of the prototype or the picture that Paul gives us of the church. And it's like, it's not good for you to be alone. Like you need the bride of Christ. You need the people of God, not online, not through video conferences, not through in-person conferences. Like your Christian life should be.

Made up of real people in your area that you spend time with, that you eat together with, that you worship with, that you sing with, that you do life together with. Yeah, I think about there's the old quote that you become – you're going to become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And when I think about that, the first thing is that I think most of us are just not very intentional about which five people those are. And the second thing I think of is if the five people you most – if you want to become a particular kind of person, then you need to be selective. And why would you not pick five people at your church to make them your five and become the average of those people? Like, why would you not – those are the people God's given you. Why would you not make them the people who form you and shape you?

The other thought I had, I heard this quote years ago, and it stuck with me. It's from Andrew Fletcher. He said, let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws. And I think that it's the kind of thing that rings true to us right away. As soon as you hear a quote like that, you understand that it's true. But we can't trace out the mechanism by which music transforms people. You can't just write down a treatise on how that works. And people say this all the time about art in general. Art changes you. It transforms you. And beauty transforms you. But it does it in a mysterious kind of way. And as far as it relates to church, something I've often thought about is that I will be sitting in church and listening to a sermon, and Pastor Dave will be preaching about, whatever topic it is. And I will be, I will have a high dosage of random things that come to mind while he's preaching that have nothing to do with anything Pastor Dave is talking about, but are incredibly spiritually important for me. Like, I will be convicted of my sin. I'll be, I'll realize there's a duty that I haven't been fulfilling, even though he's not talking about that and didn't even bring it up. And so what I would encourage, I think,

Especially young people, and if you're young like me and not old like Martin, you might have a tendency to, if you don't understand why something is important or you don't understand how that thing benefits you and the process by which you get the effect, your tendency can be to just not bother. Like, I can't see the benefit. I can't see how this thing, how X input leads to Y outcome. And so I'm just not going to bother with the X input anymore. That's extraneous. I can cut it out. And so my encouragement to you is that the Lord has given you ordinary means of grace, and he works through them, and we know that he does. And just trust the process. Just trust that God is working, even if you don't understand. And trust that when you come to church, even if you don't feel like you had this great mountaintop spiritual high, that...

Somehow, God in His plan and His providence through His Spirit was working to mold you and shape you into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, even though you didn't have this extraordinary spiritual or emotional experience. And I'll just say I've seen enough people who feel like they have those amazing experiences. I've had them come to a church before, and I've seen the results of living. with that expectation. And I'm not dismissing, I mean, I've also in my own life, like I've had dramatic moments where God really helped me and that's great. But when you make that your end goal, and then you come to the, you approach the ordinary means of grace that God has said, this is how I want to help you. And you reply to that with a dismissive sense of saying, no, what I wish I could have is X. I want something that moves me in some dramatic way. That path can actually end up leading to somebody's spiritual destruction.

because it awakens within them the desire to be, they think that they're wanting to be moved by God, air quotes there, but what they're actually getting a deeper and deeper desire for is to be emotionally stirred and motivated in some way so that they'll feel good. I actually remember reading a book recently where they mentioned the fact when people are under deep conviction, where they're deeply moved, if it would extend for too long a period of time, this is an experience of, it's from revival and revivalism actually, 1700s, and these guys said 1800s, that when they would see that happen, extend over more than two to three days, then the person didn't actually experience spiritual transformation. They just stayed stuck in that spot and then moved on, the Spirit of God moved on, and they went back to life as normal. And I'm afraid there are too many people that are addicted to that cycle of of a dramatic moment of emotion, and then it tapers back off and then they're looking for the next high. And it really doesn't matter then what it is that gives them that high nearly so much as it is how they feel about it when they leave. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest things is I'm listening to you talk and considering the discussion we're having, it just is apparent to me that church is about what I get out of it, what my experience is, that like the church has even catered to saying, we are here to provide for you an experience.

And you just mentioned you're like, well, maybe you went to church and maybe you didn't have this experience. And I'm sitting here thinking like, okay, but did you love anybody while you were at church today? Like, did you do anybody any good or did you just come expecting to? Receive something. Receive. Yeah. It's like when you come to church, your goal shouldn't simply be to receive. And the reason, because our expectations are, you know. tipped so far in that direction, what I want to say to you is you should come to church, you should cultivate an expectation of giving. That that's actually what you should be preparing your heart to do. When I go to church today, I'm going to worship God with these people and as I have my conversations about fellowship afterwards, I'm going to try to provide a benefit. I'm going to provide some encouragement. I'm going to pray with somebody.

Like not some big miraculous prayer, but I'm going to talk to them. And if they're saying, yeah, this is what's going on. This is what was hard. This is what's coming up, whatever. What I'm going to say to them is, why don't we, can I pray for you? Let's pray. And that's what I'm going to do when I go to church today. And that's a really, that's so far away from what am I getting out of it? Like what did, what was provided for me? What can I give? How can I, how can I, how can I serve God during worship with other people? How can I be a blessing?