Thinking Christian about the Church

Christians need to stop listening to the world and start listening to God so that thinking Christian becomes as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. This is Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of His people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to this episode of Thinking Christian. We are excited to be here to talk about the State of Theology report one more time. There's a lot of different statements in the State of Theology report. I'd really encourage people to go out and take a look at it. It's available for free online. But the statement that Richard and I are going to discuss today is this one. It's actually number 24 on their list. Every Christian has an obligation to join a local church. Now, unlike some of the other statements that we've looked at, you know, does God accept worship from other religions or, you know, does God learn and adapt to different circumstances? In this one, we're really looking at a more positive response from the U.S. evangelical audience. So when asked, do you agree or disagree that every Christian has an obligation to join a local church? 68% of evangelicals agreed. You can contrast that with the number of U.S. adults, just general U.S. adults, who answered this. Only 36% agreed. So 56% disagreed that a Christian needs to be in a church. It's kind of interesting. There's a pretty big, you know, perceptual gap between what U.S. Americans believe and what evangelicals believe. But I think that even with 68% in agreement that every Christian has an obligation to join a local church, that leaves 32% of people, of Christians, U.S. evangelicals, who don't believe that. And so I thought it'd be worth just talking through, what is the local church? Why do we need to belong to one, especially as we have, you know, more and more of these type of shows as, you know, church services are broadcast or screencast or whatever casts they are. Why do we need to belong to a local church when we have essentially church in our living room? Right, right. Yeah, I wondered if those 32% that I wonder if they have bumper stickers that say, hey, let's forsake the fellowship, you know, so it's, we'll get right to the nitty gritty of it, right? Well, I think, you know, when I look at this one, I actually really am encouraged that 68% agree, right? Like, that is encouraging, yes. It's a great thing, 68% of people agreeing. But then you look at it and you say, wow, there's still 32% that don't. And so the question is, what is it about church that is leaving 32% of people feeling like they don't have an obligation? 32% is basically a third, right? So, you know, if you imagine that a third of your body stopped working, right, a third of your body decided to detach, right? That's not trivial, right? And so we have to think about this beyond the statistics, right, of just, well, we've got a vast majority of Christians who believe that every Christian has an obligation to join the local church. We really wanna be pushing that toward 100%. And so I'm encouraged, but at the same time, I think it's definitely worth a conversation to kind of consider, why is it that people wouldn't go to church? I mean, you belong, I assume, Richard, to a local congregation in your area, yes? Yes, and it's right down the street. We always have this philosophy that when we join a church, that one of the things is that it's gonna be in walking distance. And just because that's in our neighborhood, that's in our community, that's really in our immediate community. Now, I live in a small, small town, but at the same time, there are 14 churches in this town. Wow. And pretty much all of them are in walking distance. I mean, I've got a Catholic church that's right behind me. Yeah. Yeah, and they ring the bells and they do all kinds of things. It's really kind of cool. So every once in a while, if we're in the middle of a show, you'll hear the church bells ringing. Yeah. It's kind of cool. But we are, there's another church that's right behind the Catholic church that we belong to now. Okay. Yeah, my wife and I moved nine times in our marriage. So we've been married since 1999. And since that time, we've moved nine different times. You know, we got married when we were still college kids, so we attended a church there in Chicago, downtown Moody Church. Sat under Pastor Luthor. That was always great. Loved going there. But, you know, those were big churches. And, you know, it was basically as college students, which my wife and I were at the time, you know, you're going, but you're not really that involved. Right. At least we weren't. And as we moved, we tried different things with church, right? We tried to go to bigger churches, to smaller churches, to different denominations, and just trying to figure out where we fit. Right now, I think we found a great church. We go to Skyline Church in O'Fallon, Illinois here, and we love it. We chose it for a very similar reason that you did. There are no churches within walking distance to us, but this church is only about a five-minute drive. And so that's fantastic. And it's just a nice, it's nice to be able to be involved. Our kids serve in the children's ministry. My wife serves in the children's ministry. I've preached, you know, once as a fill-in, and we do various things, you know, in and around the church. And so it's just good to be there. I do think that sometimes I can fall into this rut of thinking that church is sort of like supposed to be a social club. You know, it's where we go to meet people, where we go to build our social relationships and those kind of things. But really, the local church is something different than that. And the reason that you go is not because it's like, you know, a local version of Christian mingle, you know. I mean, I suppose it can be that, but it's also because each local congregation constitutes the body of Christ. You know, it's where we are members of that body of Christ. And so to sit back and be separate from that when we don't have to, and I would assume that there are many Christians around the world who maybe don't have the option of going to a local body of believers. You know, so there are some countries where it's still illegal to assemble as Christians. And that can be very difficult. And so I'm not saying that if you're not, you're absolutely not going to some local congregation that you're a horrible human being and a bad Christian. But what I am saying is that when we in America have the freedom to go and the access, the easy access to local congregations, and we're not going, I think we have some sort of a misunderstanding of what the church is, what we are to provide to it, and what it is to provide to us. Do you think that denominationalism has something to do with people who will not or are not going to church or are involved in a church right now? You know, I have sort of an interesting relationship with denominationalism because I grew up Lutheran. I was a Missouri Synod Lutheran for my entire youth, all the way up through high school. And then when I went to college, I sort of, I wasn't really saved, I don't think. And, well, I know I wasn't saved. And so for those couple of years in college, I was like, finally, I don't have to go to church anymore. And, you know, I just enjoyed life. You know, I slept in on Sunday. But I never found, even while I was going and didn't have any particular faith, I appreciated what the Lutheran church did. You know, I liked a lot of what I did in church as I got older. Now, when I was a little kid, I don't think any little kid really enjoys church. You know, there's too much sitting and singing. But I think as I got older, I really did appreciate the liturgy and the ritual and the singing and, you know, the pageantry of the whole thing. I enjoyed it. And I appreciated it. I even liked some of the homilies and, you know, that kind of stuff. And so I don't know that denominationalism is the real root of the problem. I know mainline denominations have generally seen an increasing decline. And I think there are probably reasons for that that are multifaceted, right? What I tend to see is my concern would be the proliferation of alternatives to the local congregation. And so we've kind of bought...

the end of this idea that, and I think it's a right idea, so bought in is probably the wrong way to frame it, but we've adopted technologies that allow us to broadcast church. You know, on any given Sunday, I can sit down and I can pull up YouTube. I can pull up just a TV station if anybody has cable anymore, I guess. But you can pull up church services and sit there and watch them. From any city or any town. Any city, any town. And so I can pick my pastor. You know, I'm not limited to my local area. And I think that that sort of globalizing mentality is part of what is contributing to people thinking that church isn't as important as maybe it is. And so if what I'm supposed to get out of church is teaching, if what I'm supposed to get out of church is worship, and if what I'm supposed to get out of church is, you know, just sort of dedicating an hour, hour and a half on a Sunday morning to the Lord, well, I don't actually have to go anywhere to do that. And for people who can't go anywhere, I think those are really great vehicles for them to participate in the life of the church in some meaningful way. But for people who can and they're substituting actual real-life meeting with watching, that is the creation of a one-way relationship. It's actually, it's less than three-dimensional, where fellowship becomes... That's a good way to put it. Yeah. And, you know, you can say that three-dimensional is like the Trinity, you know, it's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You're missing one of those components. Yeah, I mean, part of what we do, again, if we think about the analogy that Paul gives of the body of Christ, we're all members of this body. Each of the members has something to contribute to the body and get something from the rest of the body. And I think when we isolate ourselves by not becoming part of a local congregation, we're ultimately weakening the body by not contributing to that body. And so there's a very real sense in which we need to consider this 32% of folks who don't feel there's an obligation to join a local congregation. If the church isn't visible, it really isn't doing discipleship. And so if I can just sit back and become, you know, a number on a screen counter that says, oh, you watched this or that video or, you know, we had a million people on our live stream. If you become one of those million faceless people, you know, you're ultimately robbing your own local church and your own local community from the gifts and strengths and talents that you could bring to bear on that local community. And I think that's probably one of the biggest reasons I have trouble with this particular finding of the State of Theology report is that my concern is that these 32% of people are just not plugged in. As I said before, it's like 32% of your body quitting on you. Right. When you look at something like that and you think about, and, you know, I brought up denominationalism because I think, you know, one nice thing about the body, you know, the church as a whole is that each one of these churches, then denominations serve probably a different function of the body. Some are the arms, some of the heads, some of the, you know, all of those things that the body encompasses. There are those different aspects. And I think it's the same thing for individuals and families. If you have a way of serving that really is conducive to whether it's a denomination or a church in your area, you know, it's almost like finding a really good job. You know, finding the job that is really made, you were born for this, right? And I liken it to that. And that may be too simplistic. It may be too complex. I don't know. No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that's, you know, when Paul is talking about going to visit the Romans, the Roman church in Romans 1, 11 and 12, he says, I've longed to come to you to impart some spiritual gift. And then he kind of backtracks a little bit and says, not only that, I'm also looking to benefit from you. I'm also looking for you to give something. And so he establishes this relationship that is really reciprocal in that we give to the church, but we also get back from the church. We give to believers and we also get back from other believers. And so life lived in isolation is not sufficient. Now, I will say this. When we talk about isolation and we talk about relationships with other believers, I can hear some people, and I've had conversations like this. Well, does that mean that if I don't go to church, but as long as I have Christian friendships that, you know, I'm not isolating myself, I have relationships and that's okay. Not quite what I have in mind. You know, again, there's nothing magical about the local congregation, but what I think we have to say is that the local congregation has, again, so much of this stuff comes back to how we sit underneath an authority. A local congregation has a certain authority over our lives. They are helping to shepherd us, to disciple us, to shape and form us. And I am in no way saying, in no way saying that any local church should tell you exactly how to live your life or that a local church should have any authority beyond what the Bible gives it in your life. I don't believe that. I think that authority can easily be abused. But the church, the pastor, the elders, these folks are, you know, sort of likened to shepherds. They are guiding and shaping and pushing and molding us. And so this is an established space that God has really made. Right. There's a reason that Paul spends time in 1 Timothy talking about eldership and deacons and, you know, all these different kinds of things. It's not because they're just ancillary randomness that we could do without. Right. These are established offices within the church that are intended to do very specific things and under which we sort of sit and respect. And we give them due authority over our lives. And I think that as we sit back and we say, well, I'm part of a small group, so I don't really need to go to church. I mean, I pulled that in college too, right? When I became a Christian, I'd go to Campus Crusade for Christ meetings and I would never go to church on Sundays. Campus Crusade for Christ became, you know, where I'd go and worship. It was the community I contribute to. And, you know, all those kind of things. Chapel was a big one for us when I worked in Christian higher ed. Students would go to chapel, but they wouldn't go to church. And it's like, that's, you know, it's great to go to chapel. It's fine to go to a Campus Crusade meeting. But you're Christians. You're members of local congregations. And even if you're only going to be there for four years or two years or whatever it's going to be, you need to be as much a part of that community as you possibly can simply for the, you know, sitting under the authority of, you know, a Bible preaching church, having accountability relationships within that congregation, serving within that congregation and contributing to the functioning of that body. I mean, all of these different things are sort of there. And so, you know, I think that's where my head sort of goes with all of this is to say that maybe we just don't fully grasp what the church theologically is. And that, to me, is, I think, at root on some of this, is that we tend to say, we tend to treat the church pragmatically. So in other words, if I can get what I was getting at church somewhere else, why do I need to go to church? Well, that's a pragmatic question. Right. And the church is not necessarily pragmatic. It's not about what we get out of it. It just is. By the nature and reality that Jesus, you know, established it, it is there. We are part of it. You know, it's not a pragmatic movement. It's a state we exist in, you know, a sphere of activity, an assembly that we participate in. And so, you know, there's a difference between saying I could get this elsewhere and, of course, denying the reality of the church. But then there's also a difference between living into the reality of the church and deciding that we could fulfill all the church's functions somewhere else. Yeah. And when you think about it and you think about, I know when I go to church and I learn something new about somebody else in the congregation, and whether that's a need that...

they have, or you know, it really is the relational part of things in your community. When you go to church with somebody, that relationship is really what the fellowship is, that's what we're not supposed to forsake. So we understand that person. We understand what their needs are. We understand what their kids' needs are. And so whether we need to give something to that person or just be aware of it and know that we are praying for those people, that's really what the church is all about. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the report actually gives a little mini commentary on this one. And here's what it says. It says, this may indicate the influence of an individualistic worldview. The 32% who disagree with this, that going to church is an obligation or being a member of a local church is an obligation. They say that 32% may indicate that the influence of an individualistic worldview within the church, as well as challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and ever-increasing access to viewing various churches' services via the Internet. Now, I can agree with all that. And we've already talked a little bit about the Internet. But the other interesting thing that I think you bring up, and the reason I read that now is, you know, we may not believe that being part of the body of Christ is our choice. Once we are saved, you know, we're part of that body. But the sort of relationships you're talking about, right, require us to commit to a body of believers. And that commitment is, I think, increasingly being viewed as voluntary. Right, right. And I think it's being viewed voluntarily because, and the Internet is one aspect of it, but I would argue that it also has to do with our ability to move. Right, so I mentioned my wife and I moved nine times since we were married, right? Well, when we move, you know, from Chicago downstate, we can't attend the church that we used to attend in Chicago. Like, logistically, that's impossible. And so we join another congregation. And our moves were never predicated on the fact that we wanted to escape a given church. Right? But the reality is that we can, we can move away from a church. And so if you think about, you know, I don't know whether you people are probably familiar with Little House on the Prairie, maybe, maybe I'm dating myself again. I don't know. But I remember, you know, you'd watch Little House on the Prairie, right? And the church and the school were in the same building, right? All the grades are mixed up in the school, and then everybody goes to the same church on Sunday. Right. And you really don't have much of a choice about that. Yeah. You either can go to that church or you can not go to church. Right. And kind of everybody knows what you're doing. Right? Because there are 50 people in town, although there seemed to be a lot of people around Walnut Grove. But the point is, traveling was really dangerous and hard and difficult. You weren't going to do it on Sunday. Right. It just wasn't going to happen. Like, getting to church was what you did. You got to that church in that community. Well, now, you know, even now, we chose the church that's about five minutes from our house, but we could have chosen a church that was 15 or 20. Right. You know, if we really want to push it, we could go a half an hour. When I do Pulpit Supply, I drive to a church that's about an hour away. Yeah. You know, and so we have options. And so if I get myself in trouble at one church, I can easily move to the next. If I don't like the preaching at one church, I can just opt out of it and try another church. Right. It isn't just the Internet that's driving this. Right. It's our ability to church shop as opposed to being really tied into a community and a church that is part of that community. And so I think that as we've been able to move around, what we've discovered is that we have options. And so it seems to me a fairly simple leap to go from what church I attend is really up to me to whether I attend church is really up to me. Right. That's sort of where I go. Well, I like that because I've seen that for a while. And being a worship leader in some churches in major cities, that's been an interesting thing when you realize that, you know, 50 to 100 years ago, you had one choice of what you did for your living, you know, pretty much. You have less choices. Now you have almost have too many choices. Church is another one. School was another one. And so you hit on those by the Little House on the Prairie. And I would say that that is, that's a big, that's why we have a kind of a commuter existence now. Why, why do we choose things that are so far away from home? And what are we trying to get away from? Yeah, and I think, you know, this, I'll give an illustration of this, like our last move, my wife and I moved from up in the Chicagoland area down towards St. Louis. And part of the rationale was that we wanted to be closer to our more immediate family. So my parents live in the area. Kim's parents live in the area. And, you know, we, her sister lives in the area, so we felt like we wanted to be closer. And so when we came down, we were looking for housing. We started to look on the Missouri side. Our whole family lives on the Illinois side. Kim was going to work in St. Louis. And so we had options. We could work on the west, look for housing on the west side of St. Louis and be closer to our work, further from family. Or we could look on the east side of St. Louis in Illinois and be closer to our family and a little further from work. And so we ended up opting to be on the Illinois side because the point of us moving down here was not work. It was family. Right. And so we opted to be closer to family. But the point is, we easily could have done the opposite and we'd still be driving two, two and a half hours to get to family by the time you deal with traffic and just, you know, how to get places and all that kind of good stuff. And so I think that we have something very problematic that we've never really grappled with. Our mobility did something. And I'm not saying mobility is bad, right? So nobody hear me saying that mobility is bad. Okay. But mobility created problems that we've never sufficiently dealt with. Right. We're identifying them more with the internet. We're saying, oh my gosh, people could just opt out of going to church and they could watch TV or whatever. Like, true. That's happening. But the reality is, I think these things started far further back. Right. As soon as we had the mobility to choose churches and churches began to proliferate and we could pick whichever one we wanted, we've had this same problem. And it's the problem of we're no longer rooted in communities that have more built in accountability, more built in expectation, more built in common good. You know, I mean, even now, my wife and I live in a subdivision. I think there's like an HOA that we have. Right. But I couldn't tell you, you know, how many of the people who go to my church actually live in our subdivision. Some of them live, you know, probably some of them do, but others of them live in other subdivisions kind of across town, still close to the church, but kind of on the other side of it. Some of them live in a neighboring town called Troy. Others of them live in Bellevue or Fairview Heights, like all these different towns in and around it. And so, you know, that is a very different dynamic as well because you're not in the same space all the time. Right. I mean, I run into people at church occasionally at the grocery store. I think I've seen two people at the grocery store twice. But again, you know, you're not constantly in contact with folks. We live a more anonymous existence. Yeah. Even despite all the technology that we have around us, we just live a more anonymous existence.

And it's very strange. So I think that all of this contributes to, I would say, it contributes to the need to be part of a local congregation. Agreed. Let's take a break, and then when we come back, let's summarize this part of the State of Theology report. Sounds good. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Thank you, Christian. We just want to give a quick summary of this, and I'm going to try to tie it into a couple of other things in the State of Theology report. But really, this is one of those sort of standalone pieces that I think is really important. 68% of evangelicals viewing church membership as obligatory is actually really great. Kudos to the 68%. I would count myself among them. I think it's obligatory and important, and it's just the state in which we exist, and so we might as well recognize it. To the 32% of evangelicals who don't view church membership as obligatory, I think it's something that, as a body of believers, we need to reconsider and really think about why it is that people aren't viewing church as obligatory. And so one of the things I would just say in closing, I suppose, right, is this. When I see a question like this, is it obligatory? I wonder to myself whether or not people are answering and saying, I just don't think church is worth it. There's been a fair amount of research out there that church has been feminized, and so men have trouble finding places in the church. I have never personally felt that way, but maybe I'm just not macho enough to feel that pain point or something. I don't know. You knew that and go to a macho church on that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I don't. But I just wonder if it's a question of I don't find church to be worth going to. And that, to me, is a different theological problem than believing that we are obliged to go to church, right? And so quoting biblical passages that, you know, hey, we're members of the body, hey, we're this, hey, we're that. Like, I don't think that gets it. What I think really needs to happen is to reemphasize that being part of the body of Christ is not a voluntary conversation. It's not a voluntary choice, right? It's not like joining the Lions Club or the YMCA or, you know, opting into your local grocery store's rewards program or something, right? It's not voluntary. We're part of it. When you accept Christ, you're part of it. And so the obligatory nature, I think, rubs against our propensity to assume that we have a choice in the matter. Right. Now, there are some churches that have holy days of obligation. And actually, Sunday is one of them, or Saturday night, depending on, they've made it easy for you. I just think, you know, as people look at this and they think about this question, it's really important to start with the idea that church is not voluntary. It's not a voluntary society. Right. It's not something people opt into on a whim, right? It's not a subscription service that you buy. It's not like anything else that we transact on a daily basis. This is something that we're called to, right? And it's intended for us to, you know, if we go by like Ephesians 3, right? It's through the church that God demonstrates his manifold wisdom to the powers and principalities of the world. It seems to me that it suggests that his church, not just the random individual people who opt in, but his church, the one that he has called and established at his church, are to be together and demonstrate that manifold wisdom. Part of calling the Jews and the Gentiles together is so that there's this mixed multitude of Jews and non-Jews who are all pointing to and magnifying Jesus Christ. Right. And so if we're not together doing that, like, what are we doing? Do you, do you think that sometimes, uh, and in some, some churches, they make the church the one thing and they, and they don't make Christ the emphasis. Uh, so when, if, uh, what I'm saying is that, do we sometimes worship the church, uh, and, and, and hold that up to people, uh, rather than, you know, you're part of this church, uh, and which is, which, which I understand the meaning of that, but I think people misconstrue that. Um, and I'll give you a little bit of a, of a, of a sample. I, I, I knew this guy, uh, in Denver that we, uh, we lived down the street from and he stopped going to church. He was Catholic. He stopped going to church because, um, it was Lent and it was Friday and he goes into, uh, to get his cheese pizza, uh, uh, for his family. And he sees the priest in there eating a meatball sandwich. And so he says, I'm not, I'm never going to go back to that church again. So he, it was like the emphasis of why he was not going to church was due to a human being who was in leadership in that church. And he just said, that's, so I'm not going to go to any church again. I think that, uh, so I think there's different iterations of this, right? I think churches can go off the rails in a number of different ways and really turn people off. Um, that's one of them, you know, um. I, I decided to go a simple route here. Yeah. I mean, you know, dichotomies between what the leadership says and what the leadership does. That's a really common organizational problem and the church is not immune to that. I also think that, um, there's an appropriate way in which churches have distinctives, right? They develop their own culture and their own, um, general belief systems, their own orientations. Um, that I don't think is particularly bad, but it can lead to bad things if that church begins to elevate those distinctives above those of other churches. Right. And so we see this to some degree, and I don't want to push this too far, but to some degree, we see this dynamic happening in 1 Corinthians. You know, the 1 Corinthians audience is, is basically elevating certain spiritual gifts above others. Right. And it seems as though they are also elevating, um, men, particularly men in leadership over other men and particularly women. Right. And so you've got a, a sort of male female or a male authority problem, really, in 1 Corinthians. Right. All of that speaks to this idea that when we have these sort of divisions, when I say I'm a Paul, I'm a Apollos, I'm a Cephas, right? As opposed to recognizing, nope, we're all under Christ. Right. That those sorts of distinctives now can lead to a situation in which we begin to fracture ourselves from one another as opposed to recognizing that, hey, look, it's okay for you to be Baptist and you to be Presbyterian and you to be Episcopal and you to be this or that, but we all are one body. Right. So that I think is another iteration of it. And then there's obviously sort of what I would call the, you know, the prima donna syndrome, right? Where a lot of churches just get formed around one personality. And again, you see this a lot just organizationally, at least I do. Um, when I do some of my consulting, you see this happening. Organizations tend to, you know, or certain individuals within an organization tend to create a rather large swell of gravity around them. And so people are sort of pulled toward them. And so when that leader either leaves or does something crazy or people fall out of love with that leader or what have you, there hasn't been a sufficient love of Christ cultivated commitment to other people in the congregation or even to the mission of the congregation.

It's been really more of a commitment to that person. Right. And so I think there's a whole host of dynamics like that that we could go through and say, yeah, people may not feel obliged to join the local church because they've been hurt before, which I think is a reasonable, right, kind of thing. You can be leery of coming back into a local congregation if you've really been hurt. You can see people saying, no, those distinctives that they hold, this is getting a little cultish, or this is getting a little too narrow, or this is getting a little too whatever. And so there are these dangers within the local congregation. Right. None of that, I think, absolves us of our obligation to be part of those local congregations. There's definitely times, and I really do believe this, where it's appropriate to leave a local congregation. I've done that myself. We tried to do it as best we could, but it just became apparent that we weren't going to be able to really contribute to that congregation. I think part of that was the, expressed at the time, I would have said it was all the church's fault. But with some time and maturity, what I think it was, was it was just a misfit, right? Like it didn't work for us. At the time, I wasn't mature enough to really understand how to interact with a church like the one we were going to. And the church was very focused on a very particular sort of mission. And because there was that misfit, right, it created friction. And so, thankfully, at the time, myself and the pastor I was working with, we were both mature enough to recognize that this was a good parting of ways, and it was really amicable. We're still in touch. It was great. It was the best sort of departure you could possibly make. I say all that to say, I think there are times when somebody should leave a church, right? But my conviction is that should be done in conversation with church leadership. That it shouldn't just be something that it's like, I'm out, you know, and nobody's ever going to see me again. I find that sort of departure to be symptomatic of a lack of relationship within, you know, your church participation in the first place. If you can leave and nobody noticed you were ever there. Right. You know, were you really going there in the first place kind of thing. It's the old tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it kind of vibe. Well, and there's other things that happen with if you don't face it and you don't communicate why you're leaving, that it becomes something that may cause deeper dissension and other cracks within that church. So you don't want to leave and destroy at the same time. That's right. That's right. So I just think, you know, at the end of the day, as we kind of maybe close this up a little bit, but I do think that, you know, the church is not a voluntary society that regardless of the choices that we may have in and around our areas, that our participation in a local congregation is absolutely necessary. And what I would say participation means is really integrating yourself within a congregation, sitting underneath the authority of that congregation and trying to work your life into that congregation so that you can contribute and so that you can be that you can benefit from the life of that congregation. It isn't just attendance, right? It is something deeper than that. And so for anybody out there who's thinking, wow, I know people who don't go to church. I should go browbeat them with this statistic. Don't, you know, try to be an encouragement. Try to help them understand that the church is not a voluntary society. And, you know, for those of you who may be questioning, like, hey, why wouldn't I just sit at home and watch, you know, Pastor X on on screen on Sunday mornings as opposed to going to church much more comfortable on my PJs and my coffee to sit and watch worship than it is to actually get up and go to church. Rethink it, you know, take some time and really rethink it because I think you're shorting the body of Christ. You're leaving members yourself out of the membership of the body in important ways. And I just my hope is that you will rethink it. Yes, I agree. And thanks again, James. This has been a good conversation. And again, another wake up call and another objective that we can start looking at in discipleship. That's right. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. And we'll catch you next time on Thinking Christian. Through calm, thoughtful theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. Want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. Looking for inspiration and uplifting stories of faith? Welcome to the Jesus Calling Stories of Faith podcast, now available on Life Audio. Join us each week for heartfelt conversations and personal stories from people from all walks of life that will inspire you and lift your spirit. Whether you're seeking comfort, motivation or just a moment of peace, the Jesus Calling Stories of Faith podcast offers a beautiful reminder of faith and hope. Listen to the Jesus Calling Stories of Faith podcast on LifeAudio.com or wherever you find your podcasts.