Psych and Theo Podcast
Ep. 11 - Is It a Sin to Stop Going to Church?
Could skipping church be considered a sin, or is it a necessary step for some in healing from past trauma? Our latest episode seeks to unravel this complex issue, diving into the reasons why many have stepped back from regular worship, especially in the wake of a global pandemic. From biblical insight to psychological analysis, we examine the implications of church attendance on personal growth, mental health, and the intrinsic human need for community. Our guests, including a renowned theologian and a clinical psychologist, share their perspectives on the delicate balance between nurturing one's faith and setting healthy boundaries to protect against 'church hurt.'
As we navigate the cultural shifts affecting churchgoers and the spiritual journeys of different generations, we spotlight the intriguing patterns of millennials returning to Christianity and the diverse religious tendencies within Gen Z. The conversation reveals how identity and the search for belonging play pivotal roles in the life of the church and how this quest is reshaped in the digital age. Our guests illuminate the psychological stages of young adulthood and discuss how the formation of a Christian identity can be deeply connected to church involvement, offering fascinating insights into the evolving landscape of faith among younger generations.
Parenthood and service are cornerstones of the church experience, and our episode delves into the powerful influence parents have in shaping their children's faith and the importance of finding one's unique role within the church community. Whether it's behind-the-scenes service or leading a congregation, we explore the significance of setting an example for the next generation. Wrapping up, we leave our audience with a message of encouragement, underscoring the lasting impact of engaging in spiritual activities and the profound lessons learned through observation and experience.
Could skipping church be considered a sin, or is it a necessary step for some in healing from past trauma? Our latest episode seeks to unravel this complex issue, diving into the reasons why many have stepped back from regular worship, especially in the wake of a global pandemic. From biblical insight to psychological analysis, we examine the implications of church attendance on personal growth, mental health, and the intrinsic human need for community. Our guests, including a renowned theologian and a clinical psychologist, share their perspectives on the delicate balance between nurturing one's faith and setting healthy boundaries to protect against 'church hurt.'
As we navigate the cultural shifts affecting churchgoers and the spiritual journeys of different generations, we spotlight the intriguing patterns of millennials returning to Christianity and the diverse religious tendencies within Gen Z. The conversation reveals how identity and the search for belonging play pivotal roles in the life of the church and how this quest is reshaped in the digital age. Our guests illuminate the psychological stages of young adulthood and discuss how the formation of a Christian identity can be deeply connected to church involvement, offering fascinating insights into the evolving landscape of faith among younger generations.
Parenthood and service are cornerstones of the church experience, and our episode delves into the powerful influence parents have in shaping their children's faith and the importance of finding one's unique role within the church community. Whether it's behind-the-scenes service or leading a congregation, we explore the significance of setting an example for the next generation. Wrapping up, we leave our audience with a message of encouragement, underscoring the lasting impact of engaging in spiritual activities and the profound lessons learned through observation and experience.
All right, everyone, welcome back to the Psych and Theo podcast. Sam and Tim here, ready to start another episode, and we are excited. Well, first of all, just to talk about you guys for a little bit Hearing feedback, new topics, some comments, and we just thank you for adding to the conversation, because this is where Tim and I get some ideas about what to talk about next, and the topic that we're discussing today didn't stem necessarily from the comments, but more so kind of what we've seen in the last couple of years this aspect of how important church is to one's personal growth. Tim, what's our topic today and how are we tackling this?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the topic today is is it a sin to skip church? Or maybe a better way to say it is like should we continue to go to church?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now I'm going to kind of ask an obvious question here. Why are we even asking this kind of question? Because if you're a Christian and you've been a Christian for any length of time, you'll know that Christians go to church. That's what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what we do, Especially in the South.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you got to be a churchgoer. Yeah, like church, that Christian church is part of Christianity. So why are we asking a question like this, that it would come up? Well, the reason is that in recent years there's been a serious decline in church attendance, not just after COVID, even though COVID showed a precipitous decline and we'll get into some of those stats, but in over many, many decades there's been a rapid decline in church attendance and we'll get into some reasons why that is. But I think there's this general feeling maybe, or just some misnomers that float around in the Christian world, evangelical world, that deprioritizes, I think, church attendance in some way.
Speaker 2:They might think of things like I don't need to go to church because of X, Y, Z. I have something else. I have another way to get what I get, usually from church.
Speaker 1:I wonder if it's a Western thing more than anything else, because we were talking earlier about just different churches and around the world, how important it is to them, do you see?
Speaker 2:it that way. Yeah, we can get into that. I think when we get into biblically what church is, I think we can kind of start comparing some cultures back and forth and what that means. But yeah, so why are we asking that question? I'm going to throw it back to you because this episode was your idea. So I want you to kind of give us some reasons why we should be talking about this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a good topic in general, because when we talk about mental health, one of the primary reasons why people struggle with mental health is the lack of connection. They don't feel connected, they don't feel like they're accepted, they don't feel part of a group. And with church you would think that, hey, we should feel part of a group, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. But one of the things that also started this question was well, what happens then if you've been hurt by the church and that was, you know, five, seven years ago?
Speaker 1:You start to hear more and more of these stories of people who said I left the church because I was hurt by the church, some very valid reasons why there was, you know, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, controlling types of things that were happening in churches. So people left their church, but they never went back, and so then the justification was because I was hurt by the church. Then why would I go back to a place that is going to hurt me? And when you think about counseling, the big word is boundaries. I need to set my boundaries so I don't put myself in a position where I could be hurt again.
Speaker 1:But I think what happens is that we misconstrued or misunderstood that the church is how God also speaks to us, is how he ministers to us and how we can also minister to others. I mean we have all the one another's in the New Testament right that us and how we can also minister to others. I mean we have all the one another's in the New Testament right that talks about how we can minister to each other. So that's kind of where it stemmed from both of those parts the ones of being hurt from the church and the other part of just people now seeing it as we walk after COVID and so on Like, is there really a need to go to church?
Speaker 2:Okay, so there's at least two reasons there. Then it's one. One is a some sort of dare I say the word trauma. I know that word's kind of thrown around a lot. But, for the sake of the conversation, you'll put it in that category. Everyone's got trauma these days, you know. You know, in fact, you know I was driving on the way over here and somebody, somebody cut me off and it's very traumatic for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I I having a truck, I you know I I could traumatize them now too not that I do not that I do, but uh, someone out there is calling the cops on me right now. Basically, I didn't know, I'm just kidding. So yeah, so there's this hurt factor, injury, let's say emotional injury, that could also be spiritual injury.
Speaker 2:I don't want to minimize, we don't want to minimize that yeah, I don't want to minimize people getting hurt from the church because there are people who maybe are victims of abuse or not. Just sexual abuse could be verbal abuse or emotional, spiritual manipulation, gaslighting, anything like that. That goes on. We talked about in our episode of false teachers and how that's a. That's a a characteristic of false teachers that take that, come in and take over a church so that can happen. But then there's just the general.
Speaker 2:There is a more general sense of people getting their feelings hurt in some way and I've seen a lot of that growing up in the Midwest, in Ohio, western Ohio. There's a lot of churches over there, small country churches and the independent Baptist circles. There's a lot of church splits that go on and the church splits usually happen because someone gets upset about something, and it's usually not not rising to the level of doctrine. It's usually something like um, they don't like a decision that was made, like purchasing a church bus or something as petty as the color of the carpet, you know, or or like someone. Someone really was passionate about a certain, a certain, and the church leaders or the pastor made a decision to delegate that ministry to someone else and the first person got really hurt by that they got their feelings hurt and then they left. They got mad and left, and so there's things like that that go on all the time.
Speaker 2:So the spectrum of injury can be very wide. It can be serious forms of abuse all the way down to I'm offended about something, and so maybe I don't know, it's not in our notes, but maybe we can talk about a threshold of when it's time to maybe leave a church and find something else. But yeah, so there's that one. We'll call it the injury.
Speaker 2:And then the other one is more social or maybe technological. In some way there's opportunities to quote unquote attend church elsewhere or by another means online church social media or something like that or they might find their social connections somewhere else. I don't know. Have you seen anything like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's more the convenience factor. I think for me, when people talk about going to church, there's other things that they'd rather do. I think that's probably more of what I've seen. So, whether it be family and I've had to think about this a lot with the boys too, it's like any sports that they'll get involved in that it can't be a Sunday morning sport, maybe Sunday afternoon, but I'm not sure yet. So thinking about that, it's like okay, no, why?
Speaker 1:Because the kids see kind of how you model your life, and I think it's one of the things I'm really grateful to my dad about is that he was consistent in that, in being able to attend church and kind of creating us the importance of going to church. But obviously as you get older you realize it's not just the going to church, it's how are you serving, how are you investing, how are you spending time with other people both in and outside of the church. So that stuck with me and maybe there's a little bit of bias there, maybe in my arguments or in our arguments of why it's important. But from what I've seen, you know you're talking a little bit about hurt is that sometimes it is those. The majority is those minor issues like, well, I didn't like the music that they said, or I got hurt, someone said something about me, or they're so cliquish and this is something you find in any group. Right Job anywhere, you'll find this anywhere.
Speaker 2:So, um, so yeah, I think that's why this question has come up and hopefully we can address it in a biblical and ethical manner yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the sports issue, because I think that that actually is one that doesn't get mentioned a lot, but it's, it's a, it's a big factor, at least for american evangelicals, because, um, so there's injury we talked about that and then there's that, that sort of convenience factor of I can, I can find spiritual nourishment online, you know elsewhere but then also the opportunities for other things to take place on sunday and and for a lot of parents with kids who are growing up and they have them in sports programs, summer camps and things like that, it can, the temptation can be to keep your kids in these summer leagues and then, before you know it, you're traveling on the weekends to go play in these tournaments all over the you know the country, um, and there's a.
Speaker 2:There's a. There's a well-intentioned nature behind that.
Speaker 2:As a parent, yeah uh, because you want your kid to kind of be, if you want to be competitive in sports and succeed. I mean, it's an opportunity to get a scholarship maybe one day at a college. So I I get the reasoning behind it, but what it leads to, it could lead to, is this habit of deprioritizing church, especially in the summers, uh, to to do other things. And I think that's really the nature of the question that we're getting at in this episode is not, you know, should we never or should we ever go to church? But why is it important to be consistent in church? Our question isn't even like, is it wrong to not go to, like miss a week?
Speaker 2:You know things come up all the time. You know life happens. You got to travel. You know maybe you work a job where you have to work on Sunday mornings or something like that, you know. So things come up. So we're not trying to be legalists here and say you have to be on every Sunday, sunday morning in the congregation, yada, yada. I actually grew up in a church.
Speaker 2:I won't name the church I think I've referenced this before, but I grew up in a church where they had a policy of church discipline. Now, this is not the church I consider home now. It's when I was really little. This church considered they had a policy of church discipline and of course you could do all the immoral things to earn church discipline. Earn. But if you didn't attend church for 90 days, then they would bring you up for church discipline and purge you from the roles of the church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So they were serious about it. Yeah, you had to keep up those member church. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they were, they were serious about it.
Speaker 2:You had to keep up those member dues, yeah, so so yeah, there there's several reasons how you know how we've kind of gotten here, or at least, like you know why we're asking the question. Can I give you some stats? Yeah, Okay, so, um, if you've been alive for more than five years, then you'll know what COVID is and you'll be familiar with that.
Speaker 2:So COVID had an enormous impact, an outsized impact, on church attendance. For decades and decades church attendance has been declining, but in the last, especially in the last 10 to 20 years, it's been really, really declining and then when COVID hit, it really like was a gut punch to a lot of churches. Now it's come back some, but churches still haven't recovered fully. So let me give you some stats here. So there's a lot of surveys here, a lot of data I've pulled from different surveys. So not to bore our audience with like this survey and this survey, I'll just kind of throw out some stats here for you, okay.
Speaker 2:So before COVID-19, before the pandemic started, you know, in the four-year period leading up to the pandemic it's 2016 to 2019, there was an average of 34% of US adults said that they attended church, because that's about one in three. So that's not great, okay, but one in three said they attended. Excuse me, let me walk that back. That was church, synagogue, mosque or temple of some sort. So one in three were just religious and they would attend that once a week. Okay, so you got to factor out synagogue, mosque, temple being like hindu temple or something. Those those factors. Uh, so that's probably closer to like 15 to 20 percent would be attending church.
Speaker 2:You know, once a week you know, that's prior to covid, but from 2020 to present. Uh, that dropped, um, that dropped about five, six percent overall, like that's includes muslims, jews and is a total religious about five percent. You know, over now it doesn't sound like a lot, but if you think about this in terms of um, all the, all the religion oh yeah, yeah, yeah, um, but on average church attendance, because christian churches are about uh, now this, different surveys have different data on this.
Speaker 2:they're about they're about 10 to 15 percent percentage points lower than before covid. Yeah, so if you think about each church, the average church is 15 percent lower in attendance today, in 2024, than they were before COVID. So in a five-year, four-year period, covid hit in 2020. We're recording this in April of 2024. So in a four-year period, imagine if your church stagnated or declined by 15% in church attendance over four years. Yeah, so that's what it's kind of put that in perspective, that's what COVID did to churches in spite of, you know, their efforts of outreach and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so lockdowns, you know the lockdowns were a major part of that. You know, because people were locked down and we have we have a lot of opinions. I have a lot of opinions about the lockdown culture and all that, but we won't get into that. That's another thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, churches are about. This is a survey from, I think, gallup. Churches are only about 85% of their pre-pandemic levels right now 85% church attendance attendance. It's difficult.
Speaker 2:It's also difficult to determine some of this because some people when they leave church, like during the pandemic they would leave church and then they have not come back yet, so they haven't even switched churches, they just stopped attending church altogether. Now, that might have been what we call the Christers, the Christmas Easter Christians. Yeah, that's the ones who don't attend that much, but yeah. So, overall, to summarize that, 10 to 15 attrition rate over the last four or five years because of covid uh, so the churches are still trying to recover. Uh, about 16 of christians who attended church pre-pandemic, 16% have stopped attending entirely. That's a Barna poll from this year or last year.
Speaker 1:This is US yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, US Christians. So 16%. So if you look at all the Christians, you've got 100 Christians and you line them up, 16 of them have stopped coming to church since the pandemic of them have stopped coming to church since the pandemic. Demographically, boomers the boomers have been the most consistent in staying in church or returning to church. There's about 65% are still attending the church. They did before COVID. Okay, now some of them have switched and all that. However, there has been attrition, even among the boomers, and so, whereas they have a greater percentage of people still in church, there has been a percentage of boomers who've stopped going, and they actually make up the majority of people who have discontinued going to church. So boomers are a huge generation in terms of the population.
Speaker 1:It's interesting too, because they would be most committed, but I think they were also affected by COVID differently than the younger generation.
Speaker 2:So about 22% of boomers have stopped attending church altogether and that is the largest portion of people who have stopped attending church. Compare that to only 13% of millennials have stopped coming to church. So there's actually a higher percentage of millennials who have continued coming to church or, you know, have not left church altogether. But there's such a smaller demographic than boomers, so it's having a boomer attrition is having an outsized effect.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are some bright spots, you know, even though overall, church attendance has declined, millennials are increasingly open to church attendance, not just pre pandemic but post pandemic, and the researchers like attribute that to millennials hitting these stages of life, like marriage and children, children or like deep in their career, and so they're asking questions of meaning and they're looking for guidance, moral counsel, either for themselves or for their children, and so more millennials, whereas a lower percentage of them were not in church in their early 20s, they're now coming back to church and you know there was this is anecdotal, but I I've seen a lot of this on social media.
Speaker 2:I'm in the twitter sphere a lot and even before covid this 2016 ish, until now, so the last eight years when it feels like the the world went crazy with wokeness and transgenderism and all these other things that that exploded. Anecdotally, I've seen people kind of notice how crazy the world is getting and sort of looking at this, at their options, weighing their options of is is a non-religious world really the world that we want, or maybe I should give Christianity a try again. In fact, I've seen comments to that effect all over Twitter of people who grew up in church and they left church because it was posh or it was cool to be an atheist or agnostic and organized religion was passe. Organized religion was the source of all the problems in the world. This is like the new atheism talking um, but since then these that same demographic is starting to, I think, have a have a. No pun intended.
Speaker 2:But to come to jesus moment, yeah, um yeah, and and realize like, oh, like, maybe, maybe there was something to this Christianity thing. So there's a high percentage of millennials coming back and, interestingly, even inside the millennial, demographic minority groups make up the largest percentage of that increase.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. I mean a lot of interesting numbers there. I am interested in that. The younger generation I wonder what the gens did. You find anything with the gen z years?
Speaker 2:uh, nothing, nothing. Uh well, nothing with church attendance. I don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 1:I have some stats on like scripture reading and things like that but uh, I'd have to go dig that up yeah, because there was a something about um gen z years or those who are just graduating from high school how there was this new move towards traditionalism or going back to kind of conservative, more conservative, conservative roots. So it's going to be interesting to see how the next 10 years play out, because they've seen 10 years of liberalism and they're looking at that to your point, looking at all that happening. Like, do I want that? Like should I try something different?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's sort of that's sort of true. It Do I want that, like should I try something different? Yeah, it's sort of that's sort of true. It's true for Gen.
Speaker 1:Z guys yeah.
Speaker 2:Gen Z men are becoming more conservative, but Gen Z females women are becoming more liberal.
Speaker 1:That's right. You mentioned that in one of our episodes. Yeah, on that. Yeah. So again, very interesting numbers. It's going to be interesting to see how that plays out into the future in regards to this aspect of church attendance. People want community, I think essentially and that's why we did our episode on prosperity well, not prosperity pastors, but false teachers, false teachers, yeah. So people want community so much that they're willing to sacrifice one big part of it, whether it be the preaching or the music, whatever the case is, as long as they're getting community. I think that's what's appealing to the Gen Zers, even some millennials, that it's appealing to be part of a community If there's music, if there's entertainment. All of those things are done to bring people together. And you'll see the pastors kind of mention this. They'll say we just want people together, we want you to come to church.
Speaker 2:That's the emphasis Come to church.
Speaker 1:Here's why.
Speaker 2:And be a part of a movement that's exactly what it is, something like that. Yeah, so there's this emphasis on community which is not wrong. It's not totally wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But sometimes they emphasize community over gospel a lot of times. Okay, a lot of times, okay. So let's get into some. These are some basic Bible lessons here. Why do we go to church? Because, as we were talking about this before the episode, a lot of times people equate being a Christian with going to church. Like that verb, I go to church. And we would flip that around and say Christians belong they ought to belong to a church, a church being not a building but a community. But so many times people think Christianity, the act or the state of being a Christian, is the act of going to a church. So you want to unpack that a little bit the misnomer of equating being a Christian with going to church, church. So you want to unpack that a little bit the misnomer of equating being a Christian with going to church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think it's funny because we're talking about the age group that is coming to church, wanting community, and it's in that stage of you have teenage years, moving into young adulthood years, and in the psychology realm we'll call that the moving into young adulthood years and in the psychology realm we'll call that the identity versus isolation stage or the intimacy, I'm sorry, versus isolation stage. That's young adulthood, but prior to that is identity versus confusion. I mean you're really developing your identity or looking for it during your teenage years. That's why you see so many changes. Right, They'll like punk rock one year and then they'll transition over to, I don't know, classical the next year.
Speaker 1:They're just trying to find where they fit in and many people have taken that into their adulthood. So they're doing the same thing with churches. Where do I fit in? Where can I find my place? Who's desiring to have a connection with me? So they're going through all of that process and I think it does come down to just wanting to identify and be identified as something. So that's why everyone today is a Christian.
Speaker 1:They'll say I'm a Christian because I go to church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So early adolescence, young people, are you mentioned identity versus confusion. Is it fair to say they're moving from confusion to their sense of identity, or is it like they're making a choice between am I going to remain confused or am I going to solidify my identity?
Speaker 1:yeah, there's some who their identity is, for example, sports, so they're an athlete. So for them, that's all their life, that's what they've never known. It's clear for them. You have others who are searching, so you'll see them jump around from group to group, or they're the isolated ones who are just trying to say okay.
Speaker 1:I just don't really have any friends. I'm always bullied. They don't have anywhere to go, so they don't connect with anyone. So in a lot of ways, they feel confused about that. Why am I not liked? Why don't I belong to this particular group? I like them, but they don't like me. So either you know your identity like you're an athlete, you're the smart one, you're the smart one, you're the skilled one, whatever the case is, that's your identity. And then for others, though it's they're just confused. They don't know where they, where they belong. And again, that's why they fall into these fads and and movements, because they want to be part of something, even if it means not really believing what that group believes. You know.
Speaker 2:That's why, when we look at media, is that they're focusing and targeting young teenagers yeah, yeah, okay, so that that would be early adolescence and by the time we get to sort of the college age like later adolescence, they're going. They're that in the battle between you said uh intimacy versus isolation okay, and intimacy being like that connect relational connections with, be that a romantic partner or deep friends, or deep friends, yeah.
Speaker 1:Community oriented. And the tricky part is that some young adults take their identity confusion into that stage. So they're still confused. If they can't even identify themselves what they are, what their identity is, then they're still going through these different stages of trying to find connection in church or with other people they don't know. You know, I mean your brain is fully developed, the prefrontal cortex, so you're 25. So again, even just from a logical standpoint, it's hard to know really who you are. I mean I think I feel pretty secure in identity 26, 27. But again, some people don't even have that.
Speaker 1:Some people are doing that in their 30s, mid-30s they still don't know what to believe yeah, you know so they don't have a good grasp on, so, on their identity, so all that kind of meshes together with yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, I'd say I had to grow up pretty quick in my 20s, my teens and my 20s um, but I still I was during that time right, I joined. Well, I joined, uh, the guard when I was 25 okay, yeah yeah, um, uh, and then I got out when I was 30, so, um, so I well, I signed when I was 24, so six-year contract yeah um, but uh, yeah, I remember, like the light bulbs, like the big light bulbs of life didn't start coming on until 26, 27.
Speaker 1:Even though I had grown up a lot yeah.
Speaker 2:And I had. You know, when I was in college you know I was I worked my way into the honors program. I became, at Liberty, a resident assistant, you know, as a sophomore, which is not, it's not super rare, but it's not common either, and that was my way to pay for a college I had.
Speaker 2:there was no safety net you know, for me we're getting a little bit off topic here, but you know but. But you know I had to grow up pretty quick in that time period and so I had to. I had to basically be responsible. I think that was probably my where I rooted my identity was the competency of being responsible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then when I?
Speaker 2:get into my mid twenties and you get outside of the dorm and you get into the working world and you have to learn all kinds of new kind of competencies and responsibilities, and so I think my identity kind of got swirled up again you know, but it was like 26, 27, when like a lot of light bulbs started coming out of like long-term adulthood, like maybe I should save for a house, maybe like yeah, all these, all the big things, yeah, yeah, like you know, saving for retirement, all those things. It was just like an avalanche of like thoughts like I'm gonna get old one day, yeah yeah, yeah, okay, so we're a little bit off topic here, but no, but that's that's good, though I think.
Speaker 1:I think that is important, because if you don't know your identity, or if you're not establishing that by that age 24, 24, whatever the case is, again, where are you gonna go? Like, what church will you connect to? Like you won't see a need for it.
Speaker 2:I even saw guys, you know, when I was an RA, on the halls. Even that back then this was still millennial time period guys would say I don't feel the need to go to church, I'll just watch it from my computer, because the internet church was kind of taking off back then, the streaming services and whatnot. That was when everything buffered. You know, when everything buffered you know, had the buffering wheels and all that. It wasn't happening you know the seamless streaming that we have now.
Speaker 2:but but yeah, you know, there were guys in the dorms. This is at Liberty, you know the Christian campus. They could walk too. Yeah, they could literally roll out of their bed, roll down the hill and like land in a church you know, but they're like no, I'll, I'll, I'll watch it from my dorm room or whatever and that's my church for me.
Speaker 2:And so there's, I think, and that has not gone away, that mentality has not gone away for a lot of people. I attend church. We joke around the bedside Baptist, I go to bedside Baptist. Now, this is not to put down people who are shut-ins, not to um, there are. This is not to put down people who are shut-ins, like there are elderly communities that are not able to come to church because of physical, uh, ailments, right, some sort. So this is not we're this is not referring to them.
Speaker 2:This this is. This is the ability versus non-ability, you know, think about someone who is able, able-bodbodied and responsible enough to come to church and is choosing not to for some reason. Yeah, so, okay. So we're going around, like kind of going around the circle in the wagon here a little bit. You're circling the pond. What analogy am I looking for here? Yeah, oh, we're not. We need to land the plane.
Speaker 1:Land the plane.
Speaker 2:That's a good one, yeah yeah, the plane, yeah so, but biblically so, not to unpack a whole doctrine of ecclesiology here, but I think people have lost what the meaning of church actually is. So really, really quick, high level, biblical ecclesiology. Why am I using that word ecclesiology? Because the Greek word for church is ecclesia, which means assembly.
Speaker 2:The church in the New Testament that is the word that's used is ecclesia, or it's called the body that's sometimes the body of Christ. So the church is this relational community. It's not a country club where I pay my membership dues and then I come and I get entertained or I have nice fun social functions and I have my click and all these things, although there are a lot of people who treat church that way and I think especially the bigger the church gets, the more it attracts that kind of mentality. So big churches need to be careful about that, not to just over-program their church. But so the church is a relational body and it's full of people who are gifted, like the Holy Spirit. When someone becomes a Christian, the Holy Spirit gives them gifts that are meant to be used for the body of Christ. That is the church the elders, the teachers of the church.
Speaker 2:They are responsible to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Okay, so the ministers themselves are not supposed to do all the ministry? That's. Another misnomer in our culture is that oh, it's the pastors. They go into ministry. I work, you know, in the secular world. I'm not in ministry.
Speaker 2:But the biblical picture is that the elders of a church, they equip the saints with true, sound teaching for the work of the ministry and the church as the body, all together, using their gifts and their natural talents. But their gifts that the Holy Spirit has given them, they grow up together, they mature. This is the language Paul is using in Ephesians 4 and 5. They mature and they grow up together as one body in Christ, all having their own functions of equal importance to one another. So no one can say, like my gifts are more important and we don't necessarily, like you know, if I have the gift of teaching, I don't need someone who has the gift of mercy or the gift of giving or something like that. Paul says that is the wrong mentality to have. If you read through his letters to the Corinthian church, he talks about this the gifts to the church.
Speaker 2:So, every believer, if you are in Christ, you've put your faith in Christ. Then the Holy Spirit indwells you and has given you gifts that you need to be using in the church. So church is not just for you and what you get from church. So we talked about the eulogy of church. People who come to church and they want to read the scriptures, they want to read themselves into the scriptures. And sometimes people come to church and they treat it like a spectator sport, like I'm here to be entertained, I'm here to be fed, like a rabbit going up to a feeder and I'm just going to like you know, just nibble at the water feeder.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's my feeding for the week you know from church.
Speaker 2:That is the false picture of what church is supposed to be. As a believer, you are giving gifts to the Holy Spirit and you need to be using those. So you not only need to be ministered to in church, you need to be ministering to people. You, as a believer, you have the responsibility to identify your gifts and then to use those in the body of Christ. And you can't do that in isolation. You can't do that at Bedside Baptist yeah, right, okay.
Speaker 2:And you can't do that if you turn inward because you've been injured by church, whether that's a minor injury or a very serious abuse sort of situation. If you turn inward and you say I'm only going to focus on this hurt, I'm not going to reconnect and re-engage with any body of believers, you can't live to the fullest as a christian. It is impossible. The bible, the biblical picture, the implication here is that it's impossible to live as a true believer in Christ, like fully alive, fully functioning, vibrant, walking in the fruit of the Spirit, we might say walking in that abundant life that Jesus talks about. It's impossible to do that if you are isolated from a body of believers. So that's the biblical picture of quote unquote going to church it's like I belong to a church and I'm both using my gifts to minister and then other people are ministering to me with their gifts. So being a Christian isn't just going to church, as though attending a building makes me a Christian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds pretty radical to me.
Speaker 2:Radical Radical idea Commitment. Yeah, commitment is radical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, responsibility too, that's. That's the thing. I think this is what young people need to see is that there there's this fear, anxiety that comes up when you commit to something and when you you realize I have, I am now responsible for something parents talk about. I'm not a parent, so I'll I'll. You're a parent, so you may. You might relate to this when, when you have your first child, it's like this weight of response, it's like this joy, but also this weight of responsibility hits you like there is now a human life that you are now responsible to sustain and that human can't do anything without you, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that weight of responsibility hits you at that moment along with the joy, and the same thing goes for any commitment that you make marriage or a commitment to a body of believers too you have this responsibility that comes with it and that can produce some anxiety in people. It's if I commit to this and I'm responsible, and that responsibility means inconveniences. At times, it means I'm gonna have to devote my time and my energy to this, uh, to these other sheep that smell and stink and make noises and all that yeah um, but that's what the biblical picture is and there's freedom in that.
Speaker 2:Sometimes people think, if I commit, if I, if I myself the language of like, I'm going to tie myself down to this. In marriage they call it the ball and chain you know or something like that, With any commitment, this image of like, oh, I'm going to tie myself down and I'm limiting my options, because sometimes young people will think of it that way. I don't want to limit my options. I want to keep looking around, but there's freedom in committing.
Speaker 1:There's freedom in choosing.
Speaker 2:There's freedom in assuming responsibility for something, because it actually takes options off the board for you and you don't have analysis paralysis and you can actually move forward with whatever your commitment is, and there's actually freedom in that. I think people need to see that especially young people.
Speaker 1:I love that, something that came up in my mind right now as you were mentioning that idea of commitment and giving and feeling responsible for serving others in the church, everything else outside of church we give everything we have and then when we come to church, it's all about just receiving. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:We do the best at our job. We're the best at, you know, maybe even at home, or the best at what else Activities that you have going on, being involved in community projects. We give everything of us to all of those other things. And then for church it's like all right, I come to receive and that's it. It's the one place that we want to give the same or more to the church, because it feeds back into itself.
Speaker 1:Everyone comes to give and there's that expectation that you should have of yourself to give to serve to the church. And then, if everyone has that mentality, we're all benefiting from that Because, again, that's the body believers serving each other and that's how it functions. Well, you know, if there's something wrong with my body, it's going to affect, you know, my sleep, it's going to affect the way that I exercise, so on, right. So you try to develop this mentality of giving of what the Lord has gifted you with to the church, but we only use those things in other places, outside of that. So I don't know, it just hit me, as it's so interesting, like I give of myself so much to this, this, this and that, but when we come to church it's like all right, what do you have to give me? And?
Speaker 1:we just wait, kind of pathetically, for things to come to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So some advice I would give. If you're in a church, some people might say, well, there's no opportunity for me, I don't know where to start. If you're in a church maybe you're in a big church and it's like programmed out and like every service feels like a choreographed Broadway show or something like that Go find someone on staff and ask them where you can help. I'm sure there's always something that needs to be done. If you're in a smaller church, I can guarantee you there's something that needs to be done.
Speaker 2:So pastors are always looking for volunteers to help and to serve in some way. So find a place where you can minister and use your gifts, and it may not be that you can immediately use the gift that you really want to exercise. So find a place where you can minister and use your gifts, and it may not be that you can immediately use the gift that you really want to exercise. So some people they feel like they, I have the gift of administration or I have the gift of leadership or I have the gift of teaching, and these are sort of platform gifts where people see you. And I think, for those guys and gals who have those kinds of gifts, maybe you have other gifts too and maybe try to exercise some of those quote unquote lesser or smaller gifts, the unseen ones that don't get a lot of praise. It's okay to exercise those too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you do have, and you mentioned that earlier too is that you do have gifts, right, I think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everyone has, every Christian has gifts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's this part of us that maybe becomes either overly critical or self-conscious, or maybe doesn't want to use or wants that platform position or whatever the case is. But the way that you develop your gifts and develop even others is by exposing yourself to these different situations. Develop even others is by exposing yourself to these different situations. You know, even talking about church hurts. Sometimes it feels like the service that you're giving feels like you're not being thanked for it. Right, and it can't be like that.
Speaker 1:But again, that's another part of this is that why are we doing? What we're doing is to serve others. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't thank you right, or that you should, that whoever's over you shouldn't say thank you for your work. But to expect that, I think, is going to set you up for that disappointment and you know, I guess, what we would call the church herd. So a big part of psychological health, mental health, is if you have false or too high of expectations, you're always going to feel like you're not being treated well, there's always going to be something wrong and you won't be able to enjoy your Christian walk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a question for you. We're both millennials, but I don't have any children, but you have children. So the millennial parents who are listening, what advice would you give them about going to church in relation to their children, like what their children observe in them or the reasons, maybe, why their children need to understand why it's important?
Speaker 1:Yeah, your kids are watching, and I experienced this both working at a Christian school and also being part of the church that I grew up in for most of my life. Your kids are watching you everything that you're doing. They're watching you at church and then they're watching you at home and they have to line up. The mistake, I think, that I've seen parents make is that they go to church every Sunday, they take their kids to Sunday school and then when they go home, it's just not the same thing. Everything and you're expecting as a parent. Well, we used to go to church all of the time and we used to take them to Sunday school and all these church events Awana and all these things. But the power is not so much in them doing those things, but it's in what they're seeing at home, how you relate to them, what kind of time you spend with them. What are you talking to them about, like, are you talking to them about Jesus, or are you just watching TV all day, Like, what are you doing with them at home?
Speaker 1:That reinforces what they're learning at church, and I saw parents who, both at church and at the Christian school, they thought that that would be enough, but I would hear stories from their kids like Mr Sam.
Speaker 1:You know, this is not what they show at church, is not the same thing that we see at home. And that was disheartening, because I love the parents and I love the students, so it was hard to kind of feel that disconnect. So I learned a lot from that is that your kids are always watching and they're not going to want to go to church, sometimes, say no, I don't like church. Okay, well, we're going to go to church, that's it. And you just kind of put them in the car and they see that discipline. And they will one day understand, as you continue to talk to them at home and you see them at church, why you did what you did. And again, it's not just the discipline, it's the body of Christ, it's getting God's word from the message, it's worshiping together, it's all of those things. And again, psychologically healthy, emotionally healthy, spiritually healthy, it's a practice, it's a discipline, it's something that they can make as part of their lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say I would just add one thing to that that you know that might require sacrifice. We talked about the summer sports leagues and things like that, Parents you know that might require sacrifice.
Speaker 2:We talked about the summer sports leagues and things like that. Parents, you know your children observe patterns and they see, oh, like, if I can deprioritize church because of something that's more important for my career or for my potential for college or whatever that is, they will subconsciously put it in them to say, okay, church is on a hierarchy of my values. It's going to be a little lower than some other things, depending on the situation. That's something that, as a parent, you may not consciously or intentionally do, but it's an interpretation of all the circumstances that a child may conclude.
Speaker 1:They'll observe your behavior and your words, right? So the behavior is what's going to make the impact, like, what are you doing? They're looking at that because that's what's real to them and they're just saying, okay, are they speaking about this? And they're just trying to see if it lines up. You know, as they get older, even as young children, right, they see things and they're taking it in. Maybe they can't put it into words, but they're seeing it. Once they're able to put it into words, then you start looking back and saying, oh, what can I do to do those?
Speaker 2:things.
Speaker 1:So just a small word of encouragement advice.
Speaker 2:All right, so that concludes our episode on going to church.
Speaker 1:It's super important. Keep doing it, and yeah, I think we're good man. All right, I'll see you next one guys.