The Church as a Family

And welcome back to QuickFast. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman, here with Pastor Dave, Timothy Deaton, and our producer, Martin. And so today, last time we talked about the way that our culture views commitment, and specifically commitment to a church. And we wanted to call... all of us to a higher level of commitment to the church. And so today we want to hone in on the way that Scripture speaks about the church and how it is like a family and what that means for how we should engage the church and how committed we ought to be. So, Pastor Dave, what would you say is the problem with the way that we understand verses? Like in Titus it says, to Titus, my true child in the faith.

barrier do you think there is for us understanding what's actually being communicated in that verse? If I understand your question, I think that we're having to process how Scripture speaks familially about us as Christians in relationship to one another in the church. You said in Titus, you know, Paul refers to him as my true child. Paul in 1 Corinthians says, hey, I became your father. And when he's instructing Timothy, he says that he's writing so that they would know how to conduct themselves in the household of God. This idea that we're not these individuals that are sort of in a holding tank, but we're actually familially committed to each other is the way scripture talks. I think that's hard for us to sink our teeth into today because...

We're taught, at least in our society, we're taught that our family structure is something that is not very important and something we can do just fine without, that we can get away from, whether that's because there's been trauma in the family or because it's of personal ambition and growth. We want to excel at something. Family in life is seen as riding in the back seat to your own personal ambitions, your own personal desires. It's seen as a hindrance. to where you're trying to go and not as a help. When you think of the levels of divorce, within the church, I mean, in society, that's a breakdown of the family. You say, well, how committed were these people to each other? And you say, well, they weren't very committed to each other. They ended up divorced. And you say, well, you don't understand. They didn't want that to happen. But their spouse did such and such and the other. And they go, well, okay, well, then that person wasn't committed to the relationship.

and there wasn't a commitment to being reconciled to one another, and so it fell apart. It's bad for the man and the woman. It's bad if there's children involved. There's harm at every point for the commitments to break down. Another thing I've noticed with kids, Christians even, where the families may not be falling apart in terms of the marriages are broken, the kids are taught. The things that they're supposed to pursue, they shouldn't be thinking that family will be a consideration in that, that they need to be considering their family commitments. You remember back in the last episode, I talked about Abram's commitment to the church as he was looking for a job. I think a lot of parents would be uncomfortable telling their kids, we think that you should stay near us.

We expect you to stay near us. We might say, we hope you can stay near us, but that's a long way away from we expect you to. We expect this family to be an ordering principle in your life decisions to be near us. We want, we expect you to be here. That would be seen in society as being oppressive or holding the child back or doing them some sort of harm. Say, well, don't you want good things for them? And I said, well, yeah, I do. What I would say is, yeah, I do. And I think that this family is a very crucial part of good things coming to them in their life. Yeah, I think our culture processes family as the sort of relationship that ties you down. And so our natural response to that cultural impression is to try to lower the commitment level so that you're not as tied down. Yeah, I think so. I think that's right.

Family is seen as a hindrance. You see the same sort of thing cropping up in newlyweds or young couples. Do you want to have kids? They're like, no, not yet, not yet. And it's like, well, why don't you want to have kids? And they're like, well, because it's going to limit our freedom and our options. It's going to keep us from being able to move about as we would like. Our relationship would suffer because there's this baby to take care of. cries when we were hoping to be doing something else like sleeping or talking or eating dinner, you know, what have you. What we generally, I think what we, the principle underneath it is commitments to other people limit my autonomy and my, my freedom. And therefore I want to lower, we want to see those commitments to other people lowered. And then when we enter into them, we only enter into them voluntarily and on our terms.

And that's not how scripture speaks about it. Like when Paul was writing to the Corinthians, he says, if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers. For in Jesus Christ, I became your father in the gospel. He's not saying you get to decide that. He's saying this is what happened in our relationship. My commitment to you is the commitment of a father to a son. And conversely, your commitment to me is the commitment of a son to a father. And that has bearing on our relationship. and on your life. He pleads with them, with the Corinthians time and time again, as a father would with his son, to not forsake the Lord, to not fight, to not go to jail, to not be proud and boastful, or not jail, to court, I mean. He pleads with them. He puts fatherly pressure on them to do what he's saying. And we're like, well, he was an apostle and he was, you know, he's writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And I'm like,

But I think there's something instructive that he says here, God chose for him to describe his relationship as that of a father to a son. And then you read the rest of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians and you go, he is just pressuring them to serve the Lord and to unite and to ally themselves with him. He expected to be important to them. He expected for them to love him instead of the super apostles that were there who were trying to steal away their allegiance. He's like, no, I'm your dad. You need to be committed to me, not them, to me. I'm your dad. And the idea that a father would say that to his son or as he's considering what to do after high school or whether to take that job, we'd be like, well, dad, you can't say that. You can't expect your son to have his relationship with you be a determining factor in in the decisions he's making. And I'm like, well, I don't know why not. Yeah. Something that has really been striking to me being at this church is the conversations that I've had with you where you just straight out assume, no, this church and me in particular as your pastor deserve your loyalty and you should give it to us. And you've said things like that to me without apology. And I don't know if I've ever had any

do that before coming here. At other churches, it was always, the tenor of the conversation was, well, I really think it'll serve you best if you, the best thing for you is to do what I want you to do right now. But it wasn't, there wasn't the expectation of loyalty of, okay, you've made this commitment to us and now I expect you to act upon that. And have I not become your spiritual father? Be a good son right now. And actually, And shuffling people kind of in the right direction is not a common thing in our society, but I think it's emblematic of what we've been trying to get at these last couple episodes in terms of the level of commitment we ought to have to a church has to be like a family. It has to be stronger. It has to be higher. Yeah, and I'm feeling awkward as you're talking because I'm just like, oh, look, everyone out in podcast land is going to think that I'm just this cult leader or this bully. And I'm like...

On the one hand, it's like, no, I expect us to love each other and to live life together for a long time. Life happens, things change, parents get older, jobs, health, whatever. But it's like, but they're my family. My life is settled here. My relationships are established here. And that's not to say everything's perfect or as it should be or how we want it. That's not true for anyone. We always think that, well, my circumstances are different. It's just not the case that everyone else has it more settled and better than we do. We all have our lacks, but our commitments to the church and to the people of the church need to be the same sort of commitments that we would have to our family, but that doesn't make any sense to us because we don't have those commitments to our family. Our dads don't say, no, son, you can't do that. We might be willing to have Dave Ramsey say, well, son, I'm not going to pay for you to go to an out-of-state college because it just doesn't make any logical sense and it's way more expensive. But why can't a dad say, honey, I don't want you to go to an out-of-state college because I want to see you more than at the semester break?

Like I've said to my older boys, as they're individuating, as they're getting more freedom and as they're doing the things that I love seeing them do. One of the other things, and that is them growing up and them taking on responsibility and them becoming men. It's really sweet to see that happen. On the other hand, I say to them, you guys need to realize how much we, your mother and I have invested in you over these 12, 14, whatever, 15, 17, whatever years. We expect a return on our investment now. We didn't train you just to be a hard worker and to be honest and to be diligent just so you could go make money. We trained you to be those things so we would be the beneficiaries of it in our home. Doesn't that feel selfish though?

I don't feel selfish saying it because there's plenty of times where I let them, where they say, hey, can we go do this? And I'm like, yeah, sure, you can go do that. And it's like, they don't do their, whatever their responsibilities or their chores are. And their other brothers get an opportunity to step up and to fill that hole. Because eventually they are going to grow up and step away from their responsibilities in our home, but none of them are grown yet. It's like, yeah, you have a responsibility to this family and to this house. And so I'm saying, well, as you become, as you get freedom, You have a car and a phone and a job and money and all these things. That does not mean this is your locker room now. No, we still expect you to be here for dinner. We still expect you to do your chores. Well, I got all these other jobs and I got all these other responsibilities. Well, then you'll have to say no to those, not to us. But why does it, I think a lot of people who listen to this are thinking, but if I tried to say, no, you should stay close to me, I would feel selfish saying that to my child.

Why do you think that is? Why do we feel selfish saying that? I think culturally, we've just been taught that you're not supposed to have, like that your love for your family is not supposed to like have any real teeth. And there's a way of doing, of expecting your children to be oriented in a way, towards you in a way that's harmful and ungodly. I'm not, there are different cultures that like, if the parents, even into adulthood, like. As the children become adults, the parents still have complete say. Yeah, they're smothering. Yeah, and that's not what I'm advocating for. Remember, I said with my kids, they get freedoms. They get to go do things. I'm not trying to keep the band together forever, so to speak. I'll miss them. I already miss them, and they're not even out of my house yet because they're getting a longer leash. They're starting to go get to do things that we've not experienced before.

You know, having our oldest be a 17-year-old right now. But it's not either you're a kid and you're committed to this house and you don't have a life outside of it. And then all of a sudden, you're an adult, so you have no more commitments to us. It's just not like that. They do have a commitment to our house, but it's shifting and changing as they get older. But it's not shifting and changing to nothing. Yeah, I read an article recently about how it was called the Buddhist mood. in evangelicalism. And I think that there's a lot of... And basically, the reason I think we have trouble expecting our kids to live near us and we feel selfish having that expectation is because of the Buddhist mood that we are expected... Buddhism basically teaches detachment from all entanglements. And we're expected to be detached from our children in that sense. And I think it's possible that we got that idea from Buddhism and not from Christianity.

Yeah, I think there's this idea that we're going to hold them back. And it was interesting. Years ago, we had a guy in our church who was not American. And the general idea in America is like, for your boys to become men, they have to leave the house. That's an American thought. That's not true in other cultures. And so this guy was from another culture. So he got through high school, and he was into college, and he was into young adulthood. And there was just an absolute expectation that he would not leave the house. Like there was none of that. I was like, they expected like, you're gonna stick around here and you're gonna be a part of the family and you're gonna mow the grass and you're gonna, whatever else you got going on, like you still have responsibilities here. And it really was an expectation that you would be there doing those things until you got married. Yeah. That you would simply go from one family to another family. And in an American way of thinking, we go, well, then he's never going to individuate from the family. And I think it's a function of...

American parenting and our inability to raise our kids up and have these tests or these times where they come of age through various things, where we have to say, well, we have to do it all at once because we haven't prepped or done any of that along the way, where that's not the only way to do it. And so we've had families in our church that are godly and their kids have individuated and their kids haven't left the home the minute they turned 18. Their kids stayed in their house. and became men. But it required their parents to not continue to treat them like kids, but also to expect them to still be members of the household. So a simple thing would be, okay, you have a job, you're out of high school in this situation, but we do still expect you to be here for dinner a few nights a week. You're not hearing me every night. You've got other responsibilities and things going on. We understand that. But we actually, here is our expectation.

And the family set their expectations where they were and they were reasonable. And we do still expect you to keep your room clean. And we do still expect you to do your chores, like some help around the house, chores that make sense for you. But you're free to go and live. And it's this like not completely dependent, but not completely independent or autonomous either. And I think that in families, we never should get completely autonomous of our families. But our families are so messed up. We're like, I have to get away from those people because they're a mess and they bring me down and they're always asking for money or whatever. I just got to get away from them. And I think you got to have boundaries. That's true. Fences make good neighbors type of thing as you grow up. But the idea that you would just leave your family behind and not feel a commitment to them or that they wouldn't feel a commitment to you or you wouldn't be taught that is a shame. I think that we should want our kids to be around us.

We should want to be around them. We should raise the type of children that we want to spend time with and be around so that when they're older and it's a more voluntary association that we all voluntarily say, yeah, we love each other, so we're going to continue and do this. But that's seen as harmful to the kids now. It's like, well, you're not letting them have their freedom. But what I've found is that when children graduate, from high school or college, whenever they get, I'm out in the world now, they have the most freedom they will ever have in their lives. And they don't realize what they're going to need in the future. The single young man or the single young woman, they don't have any responsibilities to anybody else that are real demanding. They've got to be at work at a certain time, but they're probably not working 80 hours a week. They're probably working 40 hours a week. So they have all this indiscriminate time.

to do whatever in the world they want to do with it. And so they go, oh, well, I can go out and go far away because no one depends on me. No, I don't need anybody. And they don't. It's true. They'll have the most freedom financially at that point in their life as they ever will in terms of disposable income and relationships or won't be people depending on them. They haven't climbed the ladder at their work. They've just got a bunch, a bunch of freedom. And so then they go and they say, well, I can take... I can take care of myself. I can go take care of myself wherever I want. What they don't realize is later when they get married, later when they have kids, they're going to start wanting people around them. But what they don't realize is everyone conspired together to send them away from the people who would most naturally be around them. It would be their family. So it's like, oh, well, they have to raise their kids on their own. They have no grandparents to come over and say, yeah, we're going to watch the kids so you guys can go out on a...

a date. It's like, where are the parents? Do your parents live in town? Do your parents live in town? Do your parents live in town? Do my parents? My mother-in-law lives in town. But of the four of us sitting here, one of us has one parent that lives close enough to actually... For there to be actual help. We're all out doing ourselves. And so we talk in church, we're like, oh, well, the women can... They trade babysitting. They trade babysitting. And that's a sweet thing. And it's great. It's a good answer to... a problem, a lack. But we shouldn't be coming up thinking, well, I don't need my family. I'm not going to, they aren't going to need me. I think parents are supposed to not grieve when their kids get older. It's like seen as a bad thing to say, like, we're going to miss you or we would like you to stay around. We'd like to see your face. It's like, well, why would you want to hold me back from that? And it's like, I don't, I'm not trying to.

We love you. We want you to grow up. We want you to have your life. We're not trying to control it. There's a bit of a needle to thread here. But we've raised you. We actually enjoy you. That's the simplest thing I ever heard about parenting in terms of like, what are you supposed to do? What's the goal of parenting? And it was to raise children that you'll enjoy being around when they're children and as they're adults. Make them enjoyable. And if you've done... halfway decent job of that, then you actually want to be around them. But our society says, well, you can't say that to them because that would be limiting their options. And I'm like, well, that's just not how the Bible works. We're brothers. We're sisters. We're supposed to be committed to each other. We're supposed to lay down our lives for one another. And that's familial. Yeah. And to kind of tie this back, I think that our challenge as church members is that we need to let the church mold us into someone who is enjoyable.

And then we need to let the church enjoy us. Yeah, yeah. So we've been talking this whole time about the family and how it works in the family relationships. And it's like, I thought this was a podcast about church members. And we're coming to it. But what I'm trying to do is show that we're tone deaf. When the Bible talks about being a brother or being a sister or being a son, we're just like, oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, we have genetics in common. And I'm like, no, we should have life in common. We should have priorities, like our priorities in common. We should be loving each other and caring for each other and spending time with each other. And our relationships to one another should be a major contributing factor in the decisions we make in our lives. You think of a family, if there's a family-owned business, most family-owned businesses, if they have children, they want their children to take over the business.

But what happened? Is there any problem in the kid who's like, well, I just don't want to do that. I want to go do my own thing. And it's like, but what about what the family built? It would just be seen as oppressive today to even ask that question. Like, why would you be trying to keep him or her from doing the thing that they want to go do? And it's like, well, because they got these people here that presumably they love and that they've been the beneficiaries of. of all of the building and sacrifice and work that their mom and dad have done. And they're like, well, I'm just going to go do it all by myself again. I'm going to start over. And I'm like, why in the world would you want to start over? Because we're at war with unchosen obligations. What do you mean? In Western American culture, we hate the concept of having an obligation that we didn't affirmatively choose. I see. Yeah, yeah. That someone else would say, you have an obligation over here.

Right. Yeah. I heard this podcast recently. It was this unbelieving lady counselor talking about her marriage. And she was saying that she and her husband have had the conversation of, well, do you want to stay married? And each time they've had the conversation, it just happened to work out that staying married was the best choice for them at that time. And that's wild and crazy. In a sense, it's just a more transparent view of how so many people in America view almost every commitment. Yeah, it's voluntary, and I can always step out of it. Right, and like, well, I really feel like it serves me best to continue the relationship as is, but I also reserve the right to change that at any point when I feel like it no longer does. Yeah, yeah, and it's, how do you build anything or grow anything? You know, when we planted this church, had a couple of things that we knew were important. And one of them was to establish a family, a church family, and to have fellowship and involvement in each other's lives and love and help was really important to us. And so at church on Sundays, it's still true today. I mean, there's more kids, little kids in this now, so parents have more limitations.

But one of the things that's really hard, I remember when we had a bunch of little kids, but we had a bunch of kids, but they were all little. That was a really hard season because it's like you can't hang around for an hour after church when you've got three, four, five little kids that cannot watch themselves. Like mom and dad are busy just taking care of their kids. And it was seen as a loss or a... a burden to not be able to have that fellowship and that communion with the church family, because you're trying to keep your kids in the building and their diapers changed and keeping them from whatever it is that little kids are going to do if you leave them unattended. But we miss that. And so now, I mean, it's still common today that church ends around noon and there's still people, and we're going to small group. We're going to a place to have fellowship, and yet people will stand in church for an hour after church, chit-chatting and talking.

Before they go to another place where they can fellowship with more people, with other Christians. That's a familial way of doing things that was important to us, that we saw as being biblical. We want to actually be involved in each other's lives. We want to function like a family. Twice I've had occasion in the last couple of weeks. I've been gone. It was overnight. for a few nights doing a men's conference up in up in wisconsin and like we our house is about two years old we built you know we built a house so nothing ever doesn't work well then so i'm up in wisconsin and my wife calls and it's hot it's like you know upper 80s humid and i'm in wisconsin she calls just like the ac is not working and i'm like uh I don't know. What am I supposed to do? And I talked to one of my kids through some of the most basic, like, is the breaker on type of thing. But then she called back later and she's like, it's off again. Like, we got it on, the breaker had tripped, but now it's off again. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm eight hours away. Like, I can't do anything. Well, I guess we're just supposed to call the emergency HVAC company and pay through the nose to have them come out. I was like, no.

I know a guy in the church who does this sort of stuff. And I just called him and I was like, I don't know what he's doing. I don't know what he's got going on in his life. But I'm like, hey, Aaron, I'm in Wisconsin. My AC is not working. It's 80 some degrees outside. Can you go over and fix it? And he's like, oh, yeah, I'll go over there in a little bit. And so he just popped over and there was a loose lug on the breaker. All he did was, you know, he figured it out. He diagnosed it. He tightened it. It all works great now. Fine. Hey, man, thank you. That's something family would do. Just a few days ago, I had to go away again for an overnight in preparation for a presbytery meeting. And I get the phone call on the way down there that my mother-in-law has water dripping out of her basement ceiling. Well, normally, I mean, she's going to call me. Normally, I would just go over, figure out what's going on, fix it.

I'm in a car with other people going to Bloomington. I can't. What am I supposed to do? And she's like, well, should I call a plumber? And I'm like, nah, let me call Aaron, same guy, because he's done HVAC. He knows how to deal with plumbing lines and stuff. And I said, hey, Aaron. And he probably lives 45 or 50 minutes away from my mother-in-law. They're kind of like at opposite ends of the span of where people come from our church. And I said, hey, Aaron, here's the situation, man. I can't get over there. I think it's an active leak. Can you go check it out? He's like, oh yeah, sure. My wife will be back in a few minutes from the store and I'll run over there. And he just drops everything and he goes and does it. And he's not like, oh, well, you'll owe me. There's just none of that. It's just a brother calling a brother saying, hey, I need a hand. Can you give me a hand? He's like, yeah, sure. I can give you a hand. That's a familial relationship. That's a familial interaction. There are times when

Aaron calls me and says, hey, Dave, can you come help me with this? Or hey, why do you know how to do about this? And it's like, yeah, whatever. Yeah, sure. I can come give you a hand with whatever that, whether it's a pastor issue or it's a house issue or whatever. That's a common interaction, but that's a familial interaction. And that we should be doing that in our families. We should also be, but we should be doing that, those types of things. Those are practical needs within the church where They're our brothers. I'm supposed to call a plumber. I don't know because I've got a plumbing problem when I know that there's a guy in the church who knows how to fix it. Now, if he's busy, I'm not saying I wouldn't call a plumber, but I'd ask him for the recommendation. Hey, you're in the industry. Who should I call? Okay, I'll call them because you trust them. There's a dependence, an interdependence that's good. It's actually good to rely on other people. Yeah, it's the fabric of a community.

of a family and of a community. And I'm afraid that the church nowadays is like, oh, well, my boss came and said that there's a job promotion, but I have to move down to Memphis to take it. So we're going to go. And I'm like, wait, what a minute, huh? How's that work? And so I've been a pastor for about 15 years. I've had occasion where people come and they'll say, we're going to move. But I often find out, I don't always find out, but I often find out they're going to move after they've talked to the realtor and the house is about to be put on the market. And it's like, I think something's broken here. It's not that I'm opposed to people ever moving. Sometimes people have moved to get closer to family, to aging parents or things like that. And it's not that I'm always opposed to that type of thing.

I'd like to see them have, as they go, one of the things that would be an encouragement to me as their pastor would, for there to be some level of genuine grief at the loss, that they feel a sense of loss, because we will feel a sense of loss. I'll feel a sense of loss. If someone leaves, I'm just like, well, where are they? We had memories with them where kids were friends or we did these things together or whatever. Now it's all, they moved away. We're not doing that anymore, what have you. There should be a sense of loss. I don't think we should view our relationships in our families and then in the church as a take it or leave it sort of thing. Something that gets a lot of press these days is that a lot of young men feel a sense of listless. They don't have a purpose. They're just drifting along. And how much of that is just because no one is relying on them? Yeah, I mean, they're not needed.

No one has needed them, so they feel not needed. And a practical example from you is this Timothy just graduated pastor's college, and you were saying that your family felt that it was kind of strange that you were, they're like, well, where are you going to move on to? And I mean, how did you process all of that? Yeah, they find some of the asking me like, what were you going to do next? And it's like, well, I think we're going to stay. They're like, oh, well, are they going to hire you? It's like, well, hopefully, but not right now. And I don't want to be here forever and not be hired. But I love this place. I love the pastors. I love the elders. I love the church, the people that I get to work with. And so I'm not ready to just, yeah, I finished school, but I'm not ready to just jump ship and go somewhere else.

To be honest, in some ways, I feel the obligation of everyone's poured so much into me. And also, I've poured a lot of myself into this place in the last five years. Paige and I have been coming here five years now. And there's mutual love and mutual fellowship that I've – I mean, I'm just speaking for myself. I've never had at another church. Yeah. there's a mutual commitment to each other. And it's like, oh, all of a sudden, your life plans are being affected by those commitments and you're not just like, yeah, well, it was a nice time, it was a nice season. Yeah, I think that's a really good example because I've thought this about you, actually, that I think our church has invested tremendously in your life. And I think it's good that we expect some sort of return on investment and for you to be around, like both in terms of, Like, we helped you through school, and also, like, the elders investing so much time and effort into developing you and your gifts. And praise God, like, for all the fruit that we've seen from that. But I do think it's good that we have this expectation that you're going to be around. And, like, you could never leave, but, you know. Yeah, and it's a mutual expectation, though. I don't think that, you know, I came to, you know.

I came to these conclusions, and I didn't feel like Pastor Dave or the elders bullied me into thinking these things or to coming to these conclusions or that it was ever implanted. Like, there's— You owe us. Yeah, I never felt like that was the expectation. But I felt the obligation because of how much I've been poured into and because of how much I've poured into myself. And I think that's part of the thing is that people don't feel committed to the church because they don't pour themselves into the church. They actually don't give themselves like they should. Yeah, and it's a two-way street where, yeah, on the congregant side, they come and they just kind of pitch their tent on the edge. And then they're like, well, I don't have any relationships. And it's like, well, have you worked to cultivate them? We don't just hand those relationships to you in a welcome packet. You have to spend the time with the people and invest in it. But also, I think some of it, like, I mean, Tim, you were asking me earlier, like, what about parents who feel selfish telling their kids?

I don't know, maybe I'm a weirdo. And there are times when I'm, certainly when I am selfish, but I don't feel selfish asking people that I love to love me in return. It's mutual. I do love Timothy. I do love you guys. And so I expect that you would love me and love us too. and that you would help. The hole that would be left, using Timothy as an example, if God did call you away somewhere else, the hole that would be left in our church, just of the work. I mean, forget the holes in our hearts about missing you and Paige and Timmy. The hole in the work that you do in our church would be like, oh my, what are we gonna do? We have to find another two or three people to do what Timothy has been taking on. And so I think that that loss, that sense of loss, that sense of suffering matters. I don't think we should just be made to suppress it. It's like going to a funeral and being like, well, we're not gonna cry. Well, I think you should cry at funerals. It's sad. Like, death is an enemy and it should be grieved. And if someone leaves your church, it is a loss. Like, you miss them. They should miss you. Yeah, and I think we have this bad tendency to theologize.

away some of the natural human attachments we ought to have. And so if Timothy were to leave us, our tendency as Reformed people would be, well, that was just God's hand of providence, and I shouldn't grieve that loss because that was God's plan. And that's just... And it's hard. It's hard to sort that out because our wisdom's not God's wisdom. Our thoughts aren't His thoughts, and what He's doing in the big picture... over the course of decades and lifetimes, we don't see it the way he sees it. And so we have to have some humility if someone is leaving or what's going on. But grief, saying goodbye is a normal part of it. And I don't think it's inappropriate in a family to take into account the...

the hole that will be left or, and I think the same is true in the church. If someone leaves, they should be like, well, but these people have come to rely on me. Like when Timothy graduated, one of my kids wanted to go to his graduation party and I was like, or not a graduation party, a graduation ceremony. And I was like, he's one of the younger kids that the ceremony was down in Bloomington. So my older kids actually, they have friends, they were born down there. They've got some friends in Bloomington. The boy that wanted to come was not, He was born up here in Indy. He doesn't have any direct, like, I want to go see him when I go to Bloomington. And I thought, being silly and being a dad, I said, hey, man, why did you want to come down to Timothy's graduation? I thought maybe he just wanted out of his nightly chores or something and just go have some fun. He's like, oh, he was my Iwana teacher, and I really love him, so I wanted to come into his graduation. And that was his whole reason. And it's like, so you say it, and it's like...

That's really sweet. I didn't put that together, but my 12-year-old son has put that together that he looks up to Timothy and he's like, yeah, I like him. I want to go to his graduation. He's been helpful to me. And it's like, it feels manipulative to say that, but I don't know that you should feel manipulated, but you should feel constrained by it. And aren't we in a habit nowadays of considering any constraints or limits put on us as they're all manipulation? Yeah. Like any kind of – Yeah, and they're not always – it's just – it's hard. I mean, I think we should love our families and love – and be loved by them. I don't think we should want to live lives separately. I mean, I guess the last thing I'll say is for me, I grew up with no family. Like, my dad was gone when I was a baby. My mom worked a ton with me growing up. I have no siblings. I spent – like, I spent a lifetime of being alone.

when I was a kid. And so I want family. I want people to be around. I've got a bunch of kids now, a wife and her family now. But God literally gave me a family through the church. And I see them as my brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters. I love them. I don't want to lose them. I want them to be around. And I want their kids to be around. And I want the grandkids to be around. just like I want my kids and grandkids to be around. But that takes a level of commitment that seems foreign to most Americans today. And so there's a lot more to say about it, but I think we'll probably save that for the next episode. Yeah, so next time what we want to talk about a little bit more is how to actually forge that kind of connection. We've spent a lot of time talking about the need for it. And so next time we're going to approach the topic of

What does it look like to actually become invested in the church and become committed and become connected? And so tune back in in a couple weeks, and we'll be back with another episode of ClearCast.