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125. Freedom In The Church - Services and Structure · 4-Freedom Podcast

0:22
Three, to thrive, they often chant a moment of rest, a wish
0:28
to grant. Not just Sundays and Wednesdays.
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It's so much more. We're always rushing out the
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door amidst the chaotic frenzy and church life I find, and a
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overwhelming guilt so intertwined.
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From Sunday school to Wednesday prayers, so many activities, you
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must be there Sunday morning, Sunday night and Thursday Soul.
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Winning schedules are tight. Saturday's outreach, it never
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ends. So many events.
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My head spins. Revival meetings, missions to
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special guest speakers. There's always a few VBS in the
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summer bus routes all year round.
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With so much to do, I might just drown.
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Children go wild. Teen activities galore.
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Ladies Bible studies. Men's meetings and more couples
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retreats. So much to plan in this
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whirlwind. Can I still stand choir practice
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and cleaning days, Christmas. Easter.
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Endless plays, Dinners. Picnics. 1 after another?
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Is there room to breathe? I often wonder.
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Game nights, potlucks, ice cream craze, fellowship prep that take
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up all my days. Deacons, nursery teachers,
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Meetings abound in this packed schedule.
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I'm feeling bound. Funerals.
1:57
Baby and bridal showers too. Wedding and baby dedications.
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So much more to do. No exceptions.
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Always be there. Activity overload.
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It's too much to bear in this frenzy, I must confide.
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Sometimes it feels like a crazy ride in this flurry.
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I must confess. Sometimes it feels like a
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massive mess with love and faith.
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Is it all sincere? But is there space to breathe in
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here? So let's take a step back and
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take a break. Re Evaluate For our own sake and
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the quest for growth, let's redefine A balanced church life
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that's truly divine. Welcome to the For Freedom
3:11
podcast. I found my freedom in you.
3:19
I found a joy I can't lose. And thank God it's true.
3:26
You wrapped your arms around me and heaven broke through From
3:31
the moment she found me. I found my freedom in you.
3:37
This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for
3:41
everyday Christians with everyday issues.
3:45
Now here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Martin.
3:54
Welcome back to the For Freedom podcast.
3:57
It's such a blessing to be back with you today.
4:00
And then we've got a lot of things on the horizon and we're
4:03
stoked we're ready to go. We're excited about what's
4:06
coming down the Pike for a podcast and some different
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things we've got coming up. But I'm just happy to be with
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you today and I've got my Co host James here with me.
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James, how's your day going so far?
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It's doing good, Brett. We are doing some some things in
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our church that we're actually going to talk about today in the
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church series. And so I was up here early
4:27
yesterday and been doing some things this morning and I just
4:31
got to do with discipleship with one of our guys here, and it's
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just a great time of opening scripture.
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We finished a book that we did. And so now we're going to start
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walking through some of the Epistles.
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We're going through first Timothy and second Timothy and
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Titus right now, just walking through each chapter each week
4:48
and discussing what the Bible means and just walking through
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life together, you know, talking about what we're going through,
4:53
the struggles, the, the victories that we've had.
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And it's just been a great time just to Cypress him over the
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last couple of weeks. And and then like I said, today,
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it was just a great time for that.
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So yeah, things are going great. We're we're plugging Lard along
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daylight savings time. Brett, I don't know how it
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affected you guys. You know, as far as as far as
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energy Wise Hour, Yeah, it affected me.
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But I really was expecting to come in and church, sort of be
5:20
down and low. We had one of the biggest crowds
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we've had since I've been here and it was just a great time to
5:27
see the Lord move. And we had some several visiting
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families. I'm thinking you guys lost an
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hour of sleep and you're coming to church like, this is crazy.
5:36
But it was good. We had a good time.
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My brothers came in and my brother came in for the Sunday
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and my mom was at church as well and so that was a blessing to to
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be able to have that so. Well, we had kind of the
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opposite effect. We had the typical low day on
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daylight savings day. So we did have some people come
5:55
out. We even had some people come in
5:58
for Sunday school when they were supposed to be there for the
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main service. And so the the typical things
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now, the thing about daylight savings for me is I like
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daylight savings time because I like having that extra daylight
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at the end of the day, but I don't like losing an hour of
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sleep. But we're things are going great
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over here for us. We're on Sunday mornings.
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We're going through a sermon series through the Baptist
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distinctives. And let me tell you a big
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resource of material and good study that I've used is the
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series that the Young Baptist Podcast did on the Baptist
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Distinctives. I have listened to that and
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listened to that and poured over it and use that as a source to
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build this series that I'm in And so much good information
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over there if you ever wanted to go take a listen to it and man,
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we're getting things together. We had a meeting with our
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deacons last night discussing mission trips overseas,
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discussion mission trips within our state, opening up some new
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areas of outreach in our community.
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Now we've just got a lot of things busy, busy year for us.
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And so just like you were just loving the Lord, serving God,
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and loving every second of it. That's great.
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Love to hear that, love to hear the church on the move.
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And we've got a couple things coming up summertime.
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We'll be here before we know it and we will be taking a break
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during the summer. So we'll conclude this series in
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the end of May and then we'll take the month of June and July
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off. But during that time, me and
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Bred are going to be getting together in Louisville, not
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Louisville. I can always keep saying
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Louisville in Indianapolis. It was in Louisville a couple
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years ago in Indianapolis and we'll be hanging out there and
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hanging out and having a good time at the Southern Baptist
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Convention. And then just a couple months
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after that, we'll be having an RFP meet up.
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And so we hopefully you'll be there planning to do that at
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Catoosa with J CS Church down down in Hope Church in Catoosa
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for the RFP meet up guys and hopefully we'll be there.
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And then the last thing a year from now, Brett, it's crazy to
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be thinking that we would be in Israel right now, but a year
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from now we'll be in Israel. Tell us about that.
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Oh yeah, we are. Listen, Israel, this Israel trip
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is going to be bigger than the last one that we went to.
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And I'm we've got so many things planned.
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We've got some good things planned.
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We want you to come with us to Israel.
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We're going to tour the whole, the whole country.
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Listen, I know they've got some things going on over over there,
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but once I'll tell you this, once they open up tourism, it's
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actually going to be safer over there because of all the
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precautions they're taking than it was when me and you went,
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James, it's going to be safer over there because of all the
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precautions and extra security. And we felt safe when we were
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over there. I mean, they were taking care of
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us. They they look after tourists
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and once tourism opens back up, it's going to be super safe to
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go over there. I'm, I'm stoked.
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I'm psyched. I'm excited to go over there.
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I've got people asking about the Israel trip.
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People are wanting to go. It's an affordable trip.
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It's a, you know, competitively priced trip.
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I doubt very seriously you're going to find a trip to the Holy
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Land priced better than the one that that we're going to offer.
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So you know it's a great opportunity once in a lifetime.
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I encourage you, if you want to go start putting back now, go to
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the website, check out our itinerary and check it out.
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Pray about it. We want anybody that wants to go
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to go. Absolutely.
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We are looking forward to it and so excited about that and about
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what we have coming up in the future.
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And so let us know if you want to go and I will have those
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details on our website as well. So other than that, man, we're
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looking excited what we've got going on with the the future of
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the podcast and some of the topics we're doing.
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I've had some people reach out to me in the last couple of
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weeks as far as you know, how to start a podcast, how to, how to
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do some things. And so that's been encouraging.
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I'm going to be on a podcast here in a couple of weeks
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sharing our story and what we've done we went through and then
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where the Lord has brought us to.
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And so I'm looking really excited about that.
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But over the next couple of weeks, we've got some getting to
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some of the nuts and bolts of ministry and in the church and
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we're going to be discussing today service and structures in
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the church. I mean seeing that in our title
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and our tagline. And so we've got hopefully
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coming up here in just the next couple of weeks we'll be having
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Brian Edwards come on. He's going to be sharing his
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story of Hope Church and the evolution of Hope Church and how
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that looks and how change looks and how the church on mission
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and doing things can can move forward and how sometimes it can
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be tough to do that. So we're looking forward to
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that. But today, Brett, we're talking
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about service and structure. Why don't you get started today
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on talking through what that looks like and maybe some of the
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the nomenclabers, I believe that's how you say that of how
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you would maybe experience some things in church, maybe some
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things that we experienced. And then we're going to sort of
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refute that a little bit and talk through what church should
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look look like and how service and structure should be.
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So I can remember when I made the decision to leave
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fundamentalism, when I made the decision to leave my IFB church
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and get out. I remember that I was looking
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for a church. We found a Southern Baptist
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church to go to. I went and preached for them,
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candidated for the didn't tell anybody that I was.
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I was going to do that because I would have been, you know,
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reprimanded for going to another church in candidate.
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And that 'cause I had been reprimanded for that in the
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past. And so I went to the church.
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I preached for the church. They called me.
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They said we, we want you to come preach again and you have a
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call. So I went, I preached for them
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and the Lord worked it out. That is where he wanted me to
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be. And so I took that church.
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It was one county over. It was 20 minutes from my house,
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a lot, the same distance as you are from your church.
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And I remember going there. One of the weirdest things to
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get used to at that church was the fact that they did not have
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a Sunday night service. I thought it was the most
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foreign, weird alien thing that I had ever experienced.
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I didn't know what to do with, you know, it's like it's like
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having like wearing pants with no pockets.
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You don't know what to do with your hands.
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And so it was like, I didn't know what to do with my Sunday
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nights because I'm so used to three to thrive.
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I mean, I've been at Hiles Anderson College.
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I heard Lee Robertson get up at Hiles Anderson College and
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preach 3 to thrive. And he, you know, Monday, Sunday
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morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
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But then he'd also do the read your Bible, pray, go to church.
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That's just how Lee Robertson preached real, simple outlines.
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And so I just remember on Sunday night thinking, man, what do we
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do? And the guilt at first was so
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overwhelming. It's like we got to do something
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spiritual. So for the first few weeks we
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would go to other churches. Like there was a Independent
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Baptist Church that we used to play basketball with, not far
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from the church that I just started pastoring.
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So couple Sunday nights we went over there, couple Sunday nights
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we went to another church. And then I started to see, you
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know what, a lot of these churches, they don't have Sunday
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night service anymore. A lot of these Southern Baptist
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churches around in the area that I was going to, they just didn't
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have Sunday night service. And so after a few weeks of
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that, I told my wife says, look, you know, we're just going to
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stay home. And the first time we stayed
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home, there was some guilt, there was some shame.
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But then there was also of man, this is nice you know because
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you got to understand, you know I'm a by vocational pastor.
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I I run an oil change shop. My wife works for me and you
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know I work 50 hours a week changing oil and then also
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pastor. I mean and I mean we're we're
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we're blowing and going just seven days a week non-stop.
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And so to just to have that time, just to rest, to be with
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my family, it was so needed. We were going through a rough
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patch coming out of fundamentalism.
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I didn't realize how much I needed that family time.
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And so we took that time and we would go out to eat and we would
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stay home and we would watch a movie or we would get a board
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game and and and we would play a board game or we would get out
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our Bible and we would study the Bible.
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But we would just do something as a family.
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And that was something that was missing.
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And it healed. It healed us so much and it gave
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us rest. There's something to be said
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when you're coming out of a bad situation for that time just to
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rest, just to recharge. It's that tiredness in your soul
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that 8 hours of sleep can't fix. You got to have some other type
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of rest, and it was that rest that me and my family, you know,
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sorely, sorely needed at that time.
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And it kind of just changed my whole philosophy.
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I didn't become a heathen. I didn't, you know, disown God
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and walk away from the church because I wasn't going to church
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on because we didn't have service on Sunday night.
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And it just opened me up to, you know, is 3 to thrive.
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Biblical. Is it spelled out in the Bible.
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If you don't go to Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday
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night, Wednesday night, you don't do all those things.
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Is it is it biblical? I mean, I mean you.
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I mean. And it's more than that.
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You know that James. It's it's Thursday soul.
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When it's Saturday visitation it's, you know, knocking doors
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on a Sunday. I mean you're there when you're
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sick. I mean, listen, I've heard of
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people bringing their chemo pumps to church.
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I mean you just had a brand new newborn baby that's susceptible
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to diseases and and and you're bringing them to church.
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I knew a guy that had hand, foot and mouth disease and he still
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came to church because he was expected never to miss.
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I think it's just a way to control people, you know, you
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know it it church it's and it's all this other stuff added into
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that just they want to fill your life, consume your life, control
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your life. Listen, I think that church is a
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part of your life. It should be an important part
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of your life, a vital, important part, a vitally important part
17:21
of your life. But church isn't supposed to
17:23
consume your life. How can you ever be in the world
17:28
enough to tell people about Christ if you're always at
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church? James, what's your take on this
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old saying that we've had preached us 3 to thrive?
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Well, you know, I was raised in the three to three to thrive
17:43
error as well. And I was born on a Thursday and
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I was in church on a Sunday. And so I've not ever known life
17:52
without church. I'm part of that.
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You're expected to be there. My mom and dad ran a bus route
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and there's a picture of me in my car seat as my mom is driving
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the bus and my dad is picking up the kids and I was just a little
18:05
baby. And so being a part of church
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has been my whole life and you know, every day at church doing
18:12
something, especially as a teenager, not necessarily as a
18:14
kid, but as a teenager doing things, being there, helping
18:18
out. You know, just being involved in
18:20
church was was part of my life. And so going to Bible college
18:25
and then that that sort of escalated even more with being
18:29
at Bible college every day and then Saturday.
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So went in bus route, bus meeting, all day visitation and
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then all day on Sunday going and going and going and then Sunday
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night service at Bible college and then leaving there and then
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going to our first ministry and same thing.
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You know we're we're at church on Sunday.
18:48
Monday through Friday was school and we were at the school and we
18:51
were teaching and coaching. And then Saturday we were all
18:54
day visitation, mowing the yards, doing what we need to do.
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Then we came to North Carolina. And so our life was still in
19:03
that same mindset. We were working outside of the
19:05
church, but we were still involved in the church as much
19:07
as we could. And then we came to our last
19:10
church. We were at Sulphur Springs in
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Hiddenite and same thing. You know, I'm there every day.
19:14
We're working. We're doing things.
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And then this really weird phenomena happened.
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A thing may have affected you. I don't know if it affected
19:22
anyone else's listening. A little disease that came on
19:25
called COVID-19. And it wasn't, you know, it was
19:29
big in our area. I don't know if it was big in
19:30
your area or not. And so all of a sudden the
19:32
church shut down. Yeah.
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Yeah. So a little thing, a little
19:36
disease, a little, little epidemic that came up and and so
19:40
all of a sudden we're going to do a a greater length of episode
19:42
on COVID here in a couple weeks. But when COVID hit, all of a
19:46
sudden the church is shut down. We're not meeting, we're not
19:49
doing things, We're not in church everyday.
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We're not being around people like we were before.
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And so this was the first experience that I had with not
19:58
having a some night service. And So what what do we and your
20:02
wife do? Sort of the same thing you do.
20:03
We sort of been back on that and we're trying to figure out, OK,
20:06
how are we going to meet, how are we going to do these things?
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And so we we did some virtual stuff and we did some some
20:12
outdoor meetings and and I just sort of looked at my wife and I
20:15
said listen. Let's not try to force this.
20:17
Let's not try to make this happen.
20:19
Let's just sort of see what happens if we invite people over
20:22
our house or just invite ourselves to be in someone's
20:25
house every Sunday night. And so for about a year, we
20:29
weren't meeting. We were meeting on Sunday
20:31
morning, but we weren't meeting formally on Sunday night.
20:34
But for about a year, we had almost every family in our
20:37
church that had a kid or a teenager in our house, or we
20:41
were in their house, or we had a youth party or we had a Sunday
20:43
school party. We had something going on in our
20:46
house. Just hanging out with people
20:48
wasn't a form of Bible study, just hanging out, eating
20:51
fellowship and doing life together.
20:54
And we just hung out with one another.
20:55
And I want. You for not social distancing.
20:59
Yeah, yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't worldwide.
21:02
So I was able to do it. You know, it's just a small
21:03
epidemic in our area. And we we hung out.
21:07
We had a great time. Well, then the church started
21:10
beating back regularly again. And then the question was, do we
21:14
start sending lights back? And I told our men, I said,
21:16
listen, I said four years ago you asked me and I said
21:19
absolutely, 100% I'm going to down Sunday night service like
21:23
we're going to have this, I said.
21:25
But I have relationally grown closer to the people in our
21:28
church by simply just hanging out with them in my house and in
21:31
their house. I said, and if I ever have
21:33
anything to do with it, we won't have Sunday night back because
21:36
my family is rested, my family is more energetic and we are
21:41
actually observing what the day is for.
21:43
It's for rest and recharge. We're coming, We're hearing from
21:46
the Lord and then we're going home and we're resting and we're
21:50
just enjoying company. And some of those times are just
21:52
with my family. My brothers and sisters would
21:55
come over and we'd just hang out.
21:56
It wasn't always with the church, but it was just a time
21:58
where we were able to actually use the Sabbath, actually use
22:02
what it was designed to do, was to rest and recharge our soul,
22:05
to get us ready. And I said that feels like when
22:08
we had that Sunday night, we're we're meeting on Sunday morning,
22:10
we're turning around and you know as pastors we're getting a
22:13
sermon back ready that's sort of halfway done because we spent
22:17
most of our time on that Sunday morning sermon and and it wasn't
22:20
really effective and all of a sudden we are changing what
22:24
we're doing and we saw it so much more effective.
22:28
And so when I came here and the the conversation has been a
22:31
little bit but you know are we going to do Sunday night And I
22:33
said unequivocally no. I'm I don't I don't have any
22:36
desire to do a Sunday night service.
22:38
I would rather do a fellowship and and have meals together and
22:42
hang out and do a benefit and and be in someone's house on a
22:45
Sunday night. Then to come and hear a repeat
22:48
of what happened on Sunday and really get not any type of
22:53
relational building whatsoever. And so that's sort of where I've
22:56
fallen since this has happened. And I do see the value of a
23:00
Wednesday night service. I see the value of a midweek
23:02
service for youth and kids and small groups.
23:05
But Sunday night, that three to thrive.
23:07
You know, I like what you said. There's a lot of controlling and
23:11
manipulation that happens. But when we do anything in the
23:14
church, what should we use as our model?
23:17
We should use scripture and we should look at what the early
23:20
church did. What did the early church do?
23:22
The Bible says. They have.
23:24
Daily house to house. It wasn't a one time gathering,
23:28
it was daily. They're encouraging one another
23:31
daily. They've been around the church
23:33
daily. They're interacting with one
23:35
another so that the church grows relationally.
23:38
And so we need to use that as our model.
23:41
We need to daily be meeting together.
23:42
We need to daily be around each other.
23:44
I'm not saying we daily come and have a worship service, but
23:47
we're daily doing life together. We're seeing each other at the
23:50
grocery store. We're seeing each other in their
23:51
houses. We're we're we're going to the
23:53
hospital when someone's hurt. We're we're providing meals When
23:56
someone's in recovery. We're as the church working to
23:59
benefit one another because that's what the church was doing
24:02
in the early church. So why shouldn't we be doing
24:04
that now? I'll tell you maybe six months
24:09
or so ago, we traded here out here at Rocky Point.
24:13
We traded our Sunday nights out for small groups.
24:17
We call them Connect groups and man, you know we were running 18
24:23
on Sunday nights. Now we could have a hundred 120
24:28
or more on a Sunday morning that you know on Sunday nights.
24:31
We were running 1518. And So what we did is we dropped
24:37
the Sunday night service and we have connect groups that can
24:41
meet anytime during the week. And what it is, is I, I, I write
24:46
out my sermon and then I write out questions from the sermon
24:51
that I give to my group leaders and they can meet with their
24:55
group anytime. A lot of them still come to the
24:57
church and meet on Sunday nights, but others don't.
25:01
I have the young adults. We meet either Monday or
25:04
Thursday nights at our house at our kitchen table.
25:07
And these are you know, college and career age guys and gals
25:12
that come in and we study the Bible and and we disciple and we
25:17
chew on the message and our attendance, our collective
25:23
attendance for these groups, small groups are more than
25:26
triple what we used to get on a Sunday night.
25:30
And then for Wednesday night we decided you know what, we're
25:34
going to have a meal. And so we have a community meal
25:37
and they're people that come to our meal.
25:39
They don't come on Sunday morning and that's fine, but
25:42
they come. They they we eat together as a
25:45
church. We provide a meal and then we
25:48
come over and we have a kids class.
25:51
I do a short devotion. I don't you know preach an hour
25:54
long thing. We're talking 1520 minutes feed
25:58
you a little bit from the word of God and then we have a prayer
26:02
meeting and you know choir practice things like that for
26:06
that's kind of our midweek thing.
26:08
You know, it's it's it's kind of, you know, it's real casual
26:12
and I think that's great and I think it's different for every
26:14
church. Not every church has to follow
26:18
the same cookie cutter method that you know, is printed out in
26:23
the house church manual. And you know, we don't have to
26:26
do that. Each church is its own
26:29
autonomous church, led by different pastors and and, you
26:33
know, different leaders in different areas to ministering
26:37
to different people. And so you kind of adjust that
26:41
to your area and you make it fit.
26:45
There's some churches they only meet on a Sunday morning, you
26:48
know. But like you said, it's not like
26:52
they come on Sunday morning and then the rest of the week.
26:54
They have nothing else to do with each other.
26:57
They're still living life. They're still doing life
26:59
together and we do see that that model in the New Testament like
27:04
you said they they had the the, you know, the corporate meeting,
27:07
they met at the portico, the temple, the synagogue, what have
27:10
you. And then they would meet house
27:12
to house, but then they would also have that individual
27:16
one-on-one time. And you have, you know, you have
27:20
examples in the Bible of, you know, like Timothy and Barnabas
27:26
and Paul of them having this one-on-one time mentoring each
27:30
other. And so, you know, that's what
27:32
church life is all about. So go ahead, I love the, I love
27:36
the liberty that the the Bible lays out for us to be able to
27:40
really figure out what our niche is, what what we're going to do
27:44
to reach our specific community and understand that what works
27:48
in Mississippi may not work in North Carolina and what works in
27:51
Hot Springs AR may not work in Hammond IN.
27:55
And all of a sudden figuring out what works in your community and
27:59
what is going to get your people excited about learning the word
28:01
of God. What's going to get your people
28:02
excited about growing together and coming and worshipping and
28:06
understanding that it's going to look different in every context
28:10
and understanding that you can do things that are maybe not
28:15
quite the same as what you were taught.
28:17
And you're not liberal left wing, crazy heretic, you know,
28:21
understanding that goes a long way in in in in planning out.
28:25
What we're going to talk about next is, is the services.
28:27
What does the service look like? And I'm going to share a couple
28:31
things as well. Brett's going to share some
28:32
things and and so Brett, why don't you take us away and start
28:34
talking about sort of the structure of a service and we'll
28:37
just go to go back and forth and talk through this.
28:40
So we've got some some different elements of a modern worship
28:45
service that we're going to talk through.
28:49
And one of the first things we're going to talk about here
28:52
is the length of service. Now, I don't know about you,
28:55
James, but I've been in some long, long church services where
29:01
you know, the worship portion is, you know, 30 minutes.
29:05
Then the preacher gets up and preaches for, you know, 60-70
29:08
minutes and. I'm going to preach as long as
29:11
they sing. Hey, man, I heard that right.
29:13
College. If they're going to sing for an
29:15
hour, I'm going to preach for an hour.
29:16
Bluff there you. Go.
29:18
But you know but I, I, you know, I as a pastor from my
29:22
perspective I think, no you got to be mindful of of people's
29:26
time you know it. You know if I my personal goal
29:30
as a pastor is I I shoot for kind of 12:00.
29:35
I think that's a good that gives me a good 40 minutes to kind of
29:39
say what I got to say. Now if I've got something that
29:43
you know I I need to finish. I need to get this out.
29:46
The spirit is on me. You know, I don't mind holding
29:48
people over, you know, 5 or 10 minutes, but I'm not going to
29:52
hold them hostage to 12:30 for the most part.
29:56
I try to cut it off at 12. You know, we start our main
29:58
service at 11, which, by the way, you don't have to do.
30:02
You don't have to start your service at that time.
30:04
You could start your service at 9:00 AM.
30:07
I was thinking, I was thinking you were starting at 10 and
30:09
going till 12, you know, giving you I.
30:12
Should have made that clear. Yeah, Amen.
30:13
Amen, brother. Listen, I like what Nathan does.
30:16
Nathan in his Hope Church, Hope Church, Asheville, they had to
30:21
start. They couldn't start for, you
30:24
know, reasons with the funding they had to start their
30:28
services, you know, at like 4:30.
30:31
Well, they enjoyed it so much. As far as I know, they're still
30:36
doing it. They.
30:36
So they wake up on Sunday morning.
30:39
They don't have church till 4:30 that evening.
30:42
And it works for them and they enjoy it And they, you know, it
30:46
gives people their Sunday to just kind of get up and and and
30:51
and rest and relax and look, there's no set time when you
30:55
know you have to do it. It doesn't say in the book of
30:57
Acts that thou shalt meet at 11:00 AM.
31:01
You know, you just do what you need to do for your area, you
31:06
know. So, you know, I kind of go, you
31:08
know, I don't mind going over a little bit.
31:10
You know, I do say kind of, you know, we don't have a Sunday
31:12
night service. I kind of pick with the people
31:15
and I say we didn't come here to go home.
31:18
But you know, for the most part, I shoot for 12.
31:21
At the same time, I think you got to, you know, go be mindful
31:25
of people's time, not hold people hostage.
31:28
But there's nothing spelled out in the Bible.
31:30
So when it comes to length of service, we do have some liberty
31:34
here. What are your thoughts on that,
31:35
James? Yeah.
31:37
Ideally I'd like to be in the service to be about an hour and
31:40
a half. I'd like to that.
31:41
That would be my ideal service. Right now we're at an hour and I
31:44
understand people need to grow into the service and grow into
31:47
where they're at and learn the the, the context of of I'm not
31:52
going to come in if they're used to a 1520 minute sermon, I'm not
31:56
going to unload an hour sermon on them.
31:57
They're not going to be able to handle it.
31:58
I got you got to know your people.
32:00
You got to know where they're at.
32:01
You can't feed a steak to a newborn baby.
32:03
So you got to bring them along And so understanding that it is
32:06
great and so but right now we're about an hour.
32:10
My typical message is between 35 to 40 minutes and then we have
32:15
about 2025 minutes of singing worship and scripture reading
32:18
beforehand. And so that's that's how our
32:21
service looks right now. And and and again all that
32:24
structure, it's going to change. It's going to move, it's going
32:27
to, it's going to some services are going to go longer.
32:29
I, I, I pick with the people because Easter's coming up and
32:33
our service is going to. We're having sunrise at seven,
32:35
breakfast at 7:30, Sunday school at 9 and service is at 10.
32:40
And I had a Deacon that told me, you know hey, brother Pastor
32:43
James, you know we we, we'd like to be out by 12 you know 12:00
32:47
hits. We we we need to be out of here.
32:49
We're farmers. We got to hit the field.
32:51
And so I've told him, I said, hey, just just get ready.
32:54
You know, Easter's coming and we're starting at 10 and I'm
32:57
going to hold you to it. We're going to get out by 12.
32:59
And so get ready. Buckle in two hours.
33:01
You know I'm going to have a long message.
33:03
We're just going to sit down. We're going to we're going to
33:04
open up and we're going to preach, baby.
33:06
I said we're going to go till 12.
33:08
Oh, I said. You guys put the standard on
33:11
there of 12. And so I'm going to hold you to
33:13
it. And so if you give me an extra
33:15
hour, I'm going to take advantage of that extra hour.
33:18
Exactly. Well, another thing we do on,
33:21
especially on Easter, is we do, we this coming Easter, we're
33:25
going to have breakfast at 8:30, we're going to cancel Sunday
33:29
school. And we're our main, actually our
33:32
main service is going to start at 10.
33:35
And so, you know, and this is so people can, you know, get out
33:38
and go cook, people have got roasts in the oven for Easter,
33:42
whatnot. And so, you know, but it's
33:45
another thing is I've also actually toyed with the idea of
33:49
changing up our order of service.
33:52
You know, we don't always have to do the same thing that, you
33:55
know, we've always done it. We can mess around with it.
33:58
Sometimes the announcements, some churches, the announcements
34:01
come at the beginning of the worship, sometimes in the
34:04
middle. Sometimes the announcements are
34:07
after the invitation. There's no set time that you
34:11
have to do these things. And, you know, recently in the
34:13
past few weeks, me and you have talked about praise and worship.
34:17
This is another thing we need to talk about when it comes to, you
34:21
know, service and structure in a church.
34:23
It doesn't have to just be all hymns all the time.
34:26
You can put some contemporary music in there.
34:29
I think it's wise to keep some hymns.
34:32
Throw some hymns in there too, because, you know, there's so
34:35
much theology in these old hymns and some of the stories behind
34:40
them are so great. I don't think you ever want to
34:41
lose them completely. And listen, the, you know, I've
34:45
said I've cracked this joke for a couple weeks in a row, but
34:48
I'll do it again, see how much I can milk out of it.
34:50
The Baptist police are not in the back of the church.
34:53
They're going to lock you away and handcuff you.
34:56
If you raise your hand during a worship service, it's OK.
35:01
You can, you can. You can raise your hand.
35:04
You can sway a little bit. It's OK, you know, You know, if
35:09
if the Holy Spirit puts on you to do that, you can do that.
35:15
What do you think about, you know about that area and then
35:19
you can bring us into our next subject.
35:21
Yeah. You know as far as structure of
35:24
the church and structure of the service specifically right now
35:29
I'm a big guy of understand I'm, I'm already a big guy, yes.
35:33
But I'm a big, I'm big on putting everything that doesn't
35:37
pertain to worship before we get to worship.
35:41
So announcements, anything that goes along with things that are
35:47
coming up, things that we need to be addressed, welcoming
35:51
guests, things like that. I want that to be first, get it
35:54
out of the way, and then the entire rest of the service
35:58
directing our attention toward God.
36:00
So we'll go from that to offering, we'll go to worship
36:04
songs, we'll go to scripture reading, we'll go to more
36:07
worship, and then we'll have the preaching of the Word.
36:10
And so everything is pointing toward the Lord.
36:14
And so I don't like to break up in the middle of worship and
36:18
throw in some announcements or throw in some, you know,
36:21
something that doesn't pertain to worship.
36:23
And so that's sort of the structure that I've went with
36:26
over the last several years. And I've incorporated that where
36:28
I'm at now. And then that leads up into the
36:31
invitation side of it. And then, you know, at the very
36:34
end, if there's we do communion, which we'll talk about as well,
36:38
we'll do communion. We do it 4 * a year.
36:41
This year, will I want to do that more?
36:43
I want to start incorporating that more.
36:46
But we'll do that on Easter. So Easter service will end the
36:50
service with communion as well, which I'm pretty excited about
36:52
as well. So you know those things and
36:56
elements we can talk through and discuss.
36:59
You know, I know we wanted to look through a couple different
37:00
things and but but yeah, for the most part that's that's sort of
37:04
how I like to do things in the services.
37:06
Everything is gearing our mind, gearing our heart, ultimately to
37:09
the preach of the word in that specific structure of the
37:13
service. Let me ask you this, do you guys
37:18
still pass plates? So yes, we pass the plates for
37:22
offering and we pass the plates for communion as well.
37:27
They at my former church, they would pass the plates for
37:30
communion, but they wouldn't for the offering, and people were a
37:33
little confused at that. We still took the offering up in
37:35
the back, but it didn't affect the giving.
37:37
People still gaze like they needed to and so so we passed
37:40
plates. We've got our ushers that come
37:42
down the aisle during that opening song.
37:44
We don't, I don't even announce that it's offering.
37:45
I just we we go into our opening song and our ushers just start
37:48
passing the plates. They don't come down formally.
37:51
There's not like a special prayer.
37:53
There's not like we just, we go into the service and the open
37:56
the service people give and then while they give, you know, it
38:00
gives our our secretary people to go back count to get that all
38:03
taken care of so they can come out for the service at the very
38:06
beginning. So, so yeah, that's how we do
38:08
it. So yeah.
38:10
So because of that little regional, you know, little virus
38:14
that went around COVID, you know, no big deal.
38:18
Because of that, this church actually and the church that
38:22
that I was in before, we stopped passing the plates and we put a
38:26
box in the back and what we found is that our offering
38:32
didn't dip any. A lot of people think that, you
38:34
know the offering's going to dip if you put a put a box in the
38:38
back and it didn't. And actually we actually
38:42
preferred it. And so we actually decided, you
38:45
know, there was some conversation.
38:47
Are we when it comes to the offering, are we going to bring
38:50
the plates back, Are we not going to?
38:53
And so we made the decision to just keep the box back there.
38:56
We we upgraded from a shoe box to a wooden box that a man in
39:00
our church built special for our offering and then we put it in
39:07
the church by the sound booth and not where I am when I shake
39:11
hands. So it didn't look like I'm a
39:12
bouncer trying to take your money from you.
39:16
But we have a, a box in the back that's an offering box.
39:20
And you know, and I think each church, whatever works for you,
39:24
you know, if you want to do it, it's great.
39:26
It's a great thing. We've had kids pass the plates
39:29
before. The only time that I still pass
39:32
the plate, right, Right. Today we still have them.
39:35
And the only time I do it is whenever I have a singing group
39:39
or special guest speaker and I need a love offering.
39:42
So in my personal experience, if you don't pass a plate, you're
39:46
not going to get a love offering.
39:47
And so that's the only time we still do it.
39:50
I have the kids come down, the kids pass the plates, you know,
39:54
for the love offering. And so that's about the only the
39:57
rest of the time it's a box in the back.
40:00
And that transitions us right over into communion.
40:04
Yeah. Well, let me stop you right
40:05
there, Brett, because we're the opposite, OK?
40:07
We when we do a love offering or a benefit offering, we have
40:11
baskets sit up front and people come and they put their love
40:15
offering in the basket. Oh, wow.
40:18
So it's. So we're completely backwards on
40:20
that. We pass.
40:21
But that's a. Good thing.
40:22
Yeah. And so I I have no preference of
40:25
that whatsoever as now I've got a friend of mine in in
40:28
Taylorsville and he told me that they started passing the plates
40:31
again just a couple of about a year ago and he said they saw
40:34
their offerings go up 10% because the people you know,
40:37
they visibly saw, they're visibly given again and he's so
40:43
you know I I don't know statistically if that's true or
40:46
not but but we. Also have to acknowledge that
40:50
absolutely we're different churches, different people.
40:53
You do. It works for your area, but
40:55
sometimes the passing of the plate can be a golden calf.
40:59
Oh yeah, yeah. Just like it's got to be done
41:02
this way because we've always done it this way.
41:04
And if it's not done this way, you know I'm going to cause
41:08
trouble. We need to be the, I think the
41:12
one of the main things through this that me and you were trying
41:17
to get across in this episode is flexibility.
41:20
You got to be pliable. You've got to have flexibility.
41:24
You can't be so rigid. You know, there's no set
41:28
standard for this. Each church has liberty to do
41:31
these things in a way that works for them.
41:35
And so we need to be flexible on these things, you know, when it
41:38
comes to communion. And you're right.
41:40
You know, we still, I think what we had, oh, you know what I
41:44
could not stand during COVID. We had those little communion
41:49
cups with the juice and had the wafer in the top under the foil
41:57
and it was like eating cardboard, dude.
41:59
It was cardboard and fermented juice.
42:04
The juice was so sour. It was so bad.
42:07
Welch's. Welch's was not part of that.
42:09
I have nightmares about those wafers.
42:13
You know, I was like I, you know, as soon as we could we
42:18
came back to traditional passing the plates because I could not
42:21
stand those wafers. Now I will say, have you ever
42:27
been to a church where they had intention communion?
42:31
Explain that term because I've never heard it before.
42:33
Intention Union is where you line up and you walk down to the
42:38
front and you break a piece of the bread off, you dip it in the
42:41
juice or the wine and then you eat it.
42:45
I've been in churches where they had intention offering
42:49
communion, and for the most part I liked it.
42:52
I don't mind doing something different.
42:55
The only thing I personally didn't care for was the fact
42:58
that the bread was it was leavened bread.
43:01
It wasn't unleavened bread. And for me, if you're going to
43:04
do communion, it needs to be unleavened bread.
43:07
So I wouldn't do that personally just because the bread's not
43:11
unleavened. But I will say we do the
43:14
traditional, you know, Lord's Supper, Baptist Church deacons,
43:18
pass the plate, you know, And then what we do, I do something
43:24
a little bit different, one of our four times a year that we do
43:27
the Lord's suppers on Christmas. We have Christmas communion on
43:32
our Christmas Eve candlelight service.
43:34
And what I'll do is I'll stand at the front with the Lord's
43:38
Supper at the table, and I will read through the scripture.
43:43
I'll pray and bless the elements.
43:45
And then as the piano plays, families will line up down the
43:50
center of the church and they'll come to the communion table as a
43:54
family. And I pass the elements out at,
43:58
you know, and have them take communion as a family.
44:00
And then they go back up the side and then the next family
44:03
comes down. You know, it takes, you know,
44:06
good 20 sometimes if you got a lot of people, 25 minutes to go
44:10
through everybody. But, you know, candlelight
44:13
service is not a long service anyway.
44:15
We're just there sit kind of singing hymns, singing Christmas
44:19
songs. They man, people really seem to
44:22
enjoy that. It's different, but at the same
44:26
time it's, you know, it's the Lord's Supper, you're together
44:29
as a family. People see it as a more intimate
44:32
thing and you know, it's just something different that we
44:35
tried that, our people really. Enjoy.
44:38
Yeah, I like that idea, Brett. I think that doing that at a
44:41
Christmas candlelight service will be fantastic.
44:43
I may actually steal it from you this year and do that now.
44:47
I have seen it done like that when at my former church I I
44:52
didn't see this done but the pastor had a wild hair about him
44:56
and wanted to do a family style communion.
45:00
And so there was AI don't know if he did this out of because he
45:06
knew there was a couple of people that were lost, the
45:08
church been praying for him. And so there was a dad that had
45:12
been coming and been coming for six months and knew he was lost,
45:18
been praying about him, been praying for him.
45:21
The family's been praying for him.
45:22
And so he said we're just going to do communion as a family.
45:25
And so we're all going to line up and we're all going to come
45:28
down and we're all going to individually grab our our
45:31
communion and we're going to take communion as a family, the
45:34
juice and the wine and all that. And so they came down.
45:37
Well, he didn't. He stayed in his seat and they
45:41
said that every. And it was before I got there.
45:43
Everybody in the church is just looking at him, like making him
45:48
feel guilty because he didn't partake.
45:50
You know, if you're in the Pew and you don't take, no one
45:52
really sees except the guy that's serving you.
45:54
And all of a sudden it was, he felt like the church was
45:57
manipulating him and trying to manipulate him and make into a
46:02
salvation decision. They say he never came back to
46:04
the church and he still lost today.
46:06
So that would be my only hindrances.
46:09
You know, I want the people to participate, but I don't want to
46:12
guilt them into forcing them to to participate because by
46:18
partaking doesn't necessarily mean you're saved or lost.
46:21
It's your own personal conviction of that moment.
46:24
And so that would be the only thing.
46:27
But, you know, in a in a special candlelight service, the
46:29
families are coming together. It's a special service as it is.
46:32
We partook in candlelight, We partook in communion this last
46:35
time at our candlelight service. We did the the communion first
46:39
and then we did candlelight after.
46:41
So then we lit the candles without trying to manage the two
46:44
back and forth. And so it's it's a great time,
46:46
but I do like that idea and I like coming forward as a family
46:50
as well. So those are great things.
46:53
What another another element of a worship service.
46:58
You know we're, you know, the service and structure is the
47:01
preaching. So we're going to hit on this
47:03
just for a minute because I am curious to get you take on it.
47:07
You know, when it comes to the preaching, I don't think that
47:10
all topical, all the time is is is accurate.
47:16
I think it's harmful for you just to do nothing but jump
47:20
around the Bible, pick and choose things, bring things out
47:24
of context. But then I'm also not of the
47:28
idea that if you don't preach expositionally, verse by verse
47:32
through every book of the Bible all the time, that you're doing
47:36
it wrong. And you know, when I've heard,
47:38
I've heard, you know, a lot of pastors that do that shame other
47:43
preachers for not always doing that.
47:46
You know, I, I, I do preach sermon series, but I, I, I mean,
47:52
I preach expositionally through books of the Bible too.
47:55
But I don't always do that. Sometimes I'll preach A sermon
47:58
series, but I make sure that my sermons are contextual.
48:03
So, you know, I might preach A sermon series where I preach for
48:07
a little bit over here and then I go preach over here.
48:11
But whatever passage I preach, I make sure that it's in context.
48:16
I don't. It's still verse by verse.
48:19
I don't pull out one phrase of a verse and then set my Bible down
48:23
and then shoot from the hip preaching on my pet peeve for 15
48:27
minutes. I do think that contextual
48:30
preaching is possible, even if it's not always verse by verse
48:34
through every book. What's your philosophy on that?
48:37
Yeah, I'm. I'm same way as long as you're
48:39
expository and you're contextual in the right manner, I'm great
48:43
on it. And we're going to do an episode
48:44
here in a couple weeks just talking about preaching.
48:47
And so I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it today,
48:49
but we do. The Bible has to be supreme in
48:53
everything we do. It's got to be the main reason
48:55
why we're gathering to preach the Word, that's why that we
48:58
meet as a church is to preach and to teach and to make
49:01
disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy
49:04
Spirit so that we can go out and make other disciples.
49:07
And so that has to be supreme in the primary Gathering is
49:11
preaching of the word. And so whether it be expository
49:14
through a book, whether it be through a sermon series, you
49:17
know, I I preach the book of Colossians right now.
49:19
I'm preaching through our core values, which those are, are
49:22
random topics. You know, they're they're the
49:24
core values of the church. I'm going to go in there at
49:27
Eastern, we're going to preach through the seven sayings of
49:29
Christ, the last sayings of Christ on the cross.
49:32
And so we're going to preach through that.
49:33
I'm really excited about that. And then we're going to go
49:36
through some psalms in the summertime.
49:38
So we're we're we're not necessarily doing entire books,
49:41
but we're expository preaching through some different topics
49:45
and and then talking through stuff and then when we come back
49:48
from the summer, we're going to be going through another book
49:51
and so we'll go through verse by verse to a book.
49:54
So, so that's sort of my schedule right now and how we're
49:56
looking. So yeah.
49:58
Now, after the preaching is the invitation time the altar call.
50:03
Just as I am with oh oh, I'm sorry of.
50:08
Course it's in. You know 2nd Hezekiah 15 Three,
50:11
that thou must have an invitation.
50:13
Absolutely. Do y'all have invitations in
50:16
your church? What?
50:16
What's your thoughts on invitations?
50:18
Yeah, we do. We have a we have a invitation.
50:22
I do like a time of response. It's not a manipulative time.
50:26
I literally say every week it's our time of invitation.
50:29
You can pray at your seat. You can come down front and
50:32
pray. There's no, there's no special
50:34
thing about coming down front. But there is a time where we
50:36
need to have a time of response and our piano player will play a
50:40
verse if no one comes down. But we don't have a song that
50:44
sung. We just have a verse that we
50:46
just have a song that's played. And so as they as he plays
50:51
people respond. If no one responds, I shut it
50:53
down after the first first verse.
50:55
I'm not going to go into this manipulative coming forward and
50:59
and doing different things. And then if people were there,
51:02
of course he's going to play and people can respond as they see
51:05
fit. But once it's over it's over and
51:08
we we move on. It is it's not this big long
51:12
drawn out manipulating you to come down.
51:16
I've seen that too many times. I've been a part of it too many
51:18
times, and I have zero desire to be the Holy Spirit in that
51:21
moment. If the Holy Spirit convicts and
51:23
they come down, that's up to them.
51:25
If not, I'm not going to be the Holy Spirit in their life.
51:28
Exactly. And you know, we have, I think
51:32
we have liberty in this area. You know, we don't have to have
51:36
the traditional invitations. There's nothing that spells out
51:40
that we have to. I know people who different
51:43
churches is, you know, instead of an invitation, they have
51:47
rooms that you can go to after the service that has, you know,
51:52
pastors in those rooms and they take turns in the rooms
51:56
counselling people. There are some churches where
51:58
after the service, you know, you the pastor says if you want to
52:03
talk to me about something that I said in the service, I'm in my
52:06
office in these hours and come talk to me in my office and I
52:11
think you hit, you hit the nail on the head.
52:15
We have to be so careful about emotional manipulation.
52:20
You know, that's always a concern.
52:23
I don't want to manipulate anybody.
52:25
I I'm not the Holy Spirit. I've been in churches where they
52:29
play verse after verse after verse and you know, the pastor
52:34
will get up and say there are two reasons to come to an altar.
52:37
One, because God talked to you and two, because he didn't.
52:41
And just try to manipulate you to come down.
52:44
And I've been in churches where the pastors are walking the
52:47
aisles and they're dragging people down to the altar.
52:52
So I, you know, I want to stay as far away from that as I
52:55
possibly can. Now, for me personally, I hold
53:01
an invitation time. I hold a response time because I
53:05
look to the book of Acts and I see when Peter preached his
53:09
message, they looked at Peter and said what do we do now?
53:13
And Peter said repent and be baptized.
53:16
And they did. So there was a call and response
53:20
after the message in Acts, I believe.
53:23
And and you know, I think that that personally I think it's
53:26
biblical, but it's not spelled out.
53:29
And so, you know, if you do something different, I'm totally
53:32
OK with that. Me personally, I always like to
53:36
give a gospel opportunity, a gospel, you know, opportunity in
53:41
my invitations most of the time. But listen, and here's another
53:45
thing. And something you kind of
53:46
inadvertently brought up the music that we play during our
53:51
invitation time, it's not always the same traditional.
53:56
I surrender all just as I am. Amazing, you know they did, you
54:02
know the IFB churches. They had three invitation songs
54:06
that no matter what was preached, it cycled through
54:10
these. I surrender, raw just as I am
54:13
songs I'm. Not pass me, not O tender
54:17
Savior. That's right.
54:19
That's right. Amen.
54:20
Our invitation song always has something to do with the
54:23
message. I didn't tell my music director
54:28
to do this. She just does it and I I love
54:32
it. It always has something to do
54:35
with the message that was preached.
54:37
There's no manipulation there. And I definitely think that that
54:42
is something that, you know, we it's it's to each church whether
54:45
they do it or not. It's not spelled out.
54:48
I personally do it, but the same time I distance myself from
54:52
manipulation. 2 more quick things before we close out here.
54:57
Prayer during the service. You know, we on our Sunday
55:01
mornings, we we go through some of the new names on our prayer
55:04
list. We take a time to open up and
55:08
take prayer. You know, is there anybody else
55:10
you have anything you want to add, you know, to our prayer
55:15
list? So we do take prayer requests on
55:17
Sunday morning. I know some churches do that.
55:19
Some churches don't. I think it's OK either way.
55:23
I just want to make sure that when we're taking prayer
55:25
requests, it's not an excuse to turn it into a gossip session.
55:30
I don't want to be, you know, hey, I want to pray for so and
55:33
so now let me tell you what they did.
55:35
And so I want to of that. James, what are your thoughts on
55:40
that? And then you can bring us into
55:42
our our last thing. Yeah, so we do an opening
55:47
pastoral prayer is how I have it set up.
55:50
So I open the service in prayer after I give the announcements.
55:53
And then our deacons lead in leading scripture, reading
55:57
scripture and taking a prayer request.
55:59
And then they have a prayer and then they close the service.
56:03
Of course I end my sermon in a prayer and then dismiss the
56:06
service. I typically will call on someone
56:10
from the crowd, from the someone from the audience to dismiss us
56:12
in prayer, whether that be a Deacon or a lady.
56:15
I'll have various different people pray to dismiss the
56:19
service and so that that's sort of how we do.
56:21
When I got here, they were doing what was called a silent prayer
56:24
and there wasn't a lot of outward verbal prayers.
56:27
And so I quickly changed that because I wanted people need to
56:30
see and hear modeled prayer and so, so I I we did that very
56:34
quickly. That was a very, very, very easy
56:37
change for me to do. And so that I believe there's
56:40
multiple forms of prayer. There's prayers of lament,
56:42
there's prayers of confession. And and we go through some of
56:45
those prayers. A lot of times I'll model those
56:49
prayers as that first pastoral prayer, whether it be a praise
56:53
of adoration, whether it be a prayer of confession, whether it
56:56
be a prayer of of sacrifice of saying God, we need you,
57:00
whatever it may be that morning and sort of what I'll model.
57:04
And then I'll of course the freedom of the whoever's praying
57:08
will have their time of of prayer as well.
57:11
So, so yeah, those are our prayers.
57:14
Real, real quick. I also want to say for our
57:18
service, I've got a lot of good men and got a lot.
57:21
All of our deacons I will call on to pray.
57:24
I actually take those prayer requests.
57:26
I don't pray for them. I let some men in our church
57:29
pray. We've got all our deacons of
57:32
course are available for prayer. Then I have other men that I can
57:36
call on to pray. And here's my personal
57:39
philosophy on this. You know what I call on, I'm not
57:44
going to just randomly call on somebody to pray.
57:47
I'm going to go talk to that person because I've been in
57:50
churches where you call on somebody to pray and they look
57:53
like deer in the headlights. So I'm going to go to that
57:57
person, say I went to a man that a couple weeks ago and said,
58:00
hey, do you mind praying from time to time in the service?
58:03
And so they said, no, I don't mind that at all.
58:05
And so mentally, I added them to my list of men to call on.
58:11
I'm not going to just call call on somebody randomly, but I do
58:14
have those men that I've talked to beforehand that I know that
58:17
are comfortable with it and I'll ask them to pray.
58:20
And and you're right. I think it's a good thing that,
58:22
you know, hear the men praying the church.
58:24
Yeah, no, I I agree with that as well.
58:26
I, I was told sort of when I got it.
58:28
So for my former church where who, who not to call them, they
58:31
they weren't comfortable praying.
58:33
And it's so I knew sort of who to call on, who to, who to have
58:36
to pray, whatever. Well, then during right before
58:39
COVID, we had a man, that very, very influential leader in our
58:42
church who had a stroke and that he was doing well.
58:46
He was very high functioning, just had some memory lapse
58:49
problems. He he asked to stop doing some
58:51
things just because he couldn't remember a lot of things.
58:54
And so after COVID and we had a lot of transition, we came back
58:59
and it was one Sunday we were meeting and I just said, hey
59:02
Frank, why don't you, why don't you dismiss us in prayer And
59:05
looked at me and said no. I was like, wow.
59:09
Dude, I was, I was blown away. I was like, OK, well, well, I'll
59:12
just miss him. Like.
59:13
And so he came up to me afterwards and, like, hey, I
59:16
thought I told you, but maybe I just told you a foreign pastor.
59:20
But after my stroke, I just don't.
59:21
I don't have the, the mental acuity to be able to verbally
59:26
pray in public. I I get my words caught up very
59:28
quickly and very easily. And so I told him not to call on
59:31
me to pray. I guess I never told you, and
59:33
I'm really sorry, but I just, I wasn't going to embarrass
59:36
myself. I said, well, no problem, Frank,
59:38
thanks for embarrassing me. It's not a problem.
59:41
And so it was, it was one of those moments like, oh, I'm
59:43
going to make a mental note of not to call on Frank and so but
59:46
that that happened as well. All right.
59:48
Last thing we'll talk about is our thought of streaming our
59:52
services. We are going through a massive
59:55
upgrade overhaul in our church right now.
59:57
New TV's, new live stream cameras, new live streaming
1:00:01
equipment, that's what I've been working on all yesterday.
1:00:03
Today, running wires, terminating wires, getting
1:00:07
things ready and so streaming services, We're in a modern day
1:00:12
of age of getting our services on platforms that are.
1:00:16
The social media or the town square as I like to call it,
1:00:22
Everywhere you see in scripture, Paul went where the people were
1:00:26
at, and Paul and Jesus would go there and would minister to
1:00:31
those people. The common square, the town
1:00:35
square, the the public square, the public, where the public got
1:00:38
their information, that's where the people were at.
1:00:40
That's where the preachers went public meeting place.
1:00:44
The public square is no longer on the corner store.
1:00:47
It's in our pockets, it's on our phones, it's it's at our homes,
1:00:51
on our TV. And so I think it would be wise
1:00:55
for us as churches to, I'm not saying you have to have a Andy
1:01:00
Stanley production service that's millions of dollars of
1:01:04
cameras and equipment, but doing it right and doing it
1:01:07
effectively goes a long way. The camera that we're using, we
1:01:11
just upgraded to a brand new camera.
1:01:13
Hopefully it'll be ready for Sunday.
1:01:15
It's high quality, it's, it's user friendly, which is great
1:01:19
for our setting and our device, but but we didn't spend half,
1:01:23
$1,000,000 on it. And so it's, it's understanding
1:01:26
that you can have a quality performance of of equipment, not
1:01:30
performance, but a quality equipment production.
1:01:33
I should use the word production that is going to portray, hey,
1:01:37
we understand that it's right to be in the public square, it's
1:01:41
right to be where the people are AT and getting our content out
1:01:45
in a meaningful way on podcast, on YouTube, on Facebook, on
1:01:51
Twitter and getting that information out there.
1:01:54
I I've, I've taken after you, Brad.
1:01:56
I've been taking some sermon clips out of my sermon and
1:01:59
putting it onto a reel and just putting a 3040 second clip out
1:02:03
and man, you don't know how many times people have shared that
1:02:05
and then messaged me and said I really love what you're doing.
1:02:08
I really love those little one minute sound bites that are that
1:02:11
are getting my attention that maybe I missed the service.
1:02:14
And I'll go back and listen to your message because you said
1:02:17
that one thing that that was really impactful.
1:02:20
And so I think those are are tactful ways to get the message
1:02:24
of the gospel out, to get the message of the church out and be
1:02:27
where the people are at. I agree with you, especially on
1:02:32
you brought up the town square, you know, that's where it is.
1:02:37
You know, I think that the streaming services, Facebook
1:02:40
Live, things like that. I think it's it.
1:02:43
It's a really great thing. Used effectively, it can be a
1:02:48
great tool. Now I understand why it's It's
1:02:51
not for every church and not every church should do it.
1:02:55
I know that if you let it, it can become a crutch.
1:02:59
I know there are people out there that are physically unable
1:03:03
to come to a church service and they watch it every week.
1:03:08
We've got some shut insurance in our church that can't physically
1:03:11
come to church, but they watch the live stream every week.
1:03:14
And for them, I know it's a blessing.
1:03:17
But then there are other people who are perfectly able to come
1:03:19
to church, but they just, you know, they don't, you know,
1:03:23
because they're lazy and and they don't want to come.
1:03:25
And I know it can become a crutch.
1:03:28
It could become an excuse. I understand that.
1:03:31
But for the most part, you know, I don't think it's, it's
1:03:34
definitely not a substitution for church.
1:03:37
But I think if done the right way, it can definitely, you
1:03:41
know, be a big benefit and help, you know, reach out to your
1:03:45
church you like. For instance, my church here,
1:03:47
we're out in the middle of the woods.
1:03:49
I mean we're out, you know, in, you know, out in the sticks.
1:03:53
And my thinking is if we don't stream our self, ain't nobody
1:03:56
can know we're out here. But then I think about like J CS
1:04:01
Church and and JC has made the decision they don't live stream
1:04:05
their services. He's at Catoosa, Hope Church,
1:04:08
Catoosa. They don't live stream their
1:04:11
services but they do upload it to YouTube a week after and and
1:04:15
that works for them. They there's I think they're
1:04:19
still using the digital media effectively for what works for
1:04:24
them and and I don't think there's anything wrong with that
1:04:28
so I do think I do. While while it can become a
1:04:31
crutch it can be abused and misused and not used the right
1:04:35
way. Especially if, you know, like I
1:04:37
said, you ain't got to get some professional, you know,
1:04:41
equipment. It's amazing what you can do
1:04:43
with an iPhone, but you know you don't want it to look ratty as
1:04:47
well. But I think it can definitely be
1:04:49
a benefit. I think it's here to stay.
1:04:51
I don't think it's going anywhere.
1:04:53
It's something that we're just going to have to get used to.
1:04:57
And I think if used the right way, it can be quite an
1:04:59
effective tool to spread the gospel and the word about your
1:05:03
church. Absolutely.
1:05:06
And and overall be professional about it.
1:05:08
Don't don't do anything halfway. You're exactly what you're
1:05:11
putting out is is the name of Christ.
1:05:14
And so we need to be professional if we're going to
1:05:16
do it, do it right, do it legitimately and and take some
1:05:21
time about it. I think the one thing that it's
1:05:23
good to know, there's a big church in in Taylorsville and I
1:05:27
was talking to the pastor a couple years ago before, before
1:05:29
COVID, before everyone was live streaming everything.
1:05:32
And he said, 'cause you know, we're, we're talking even to
1:05:34
that point, do we live stream, do we not?
1:05:36
This is before any virus before anything.
1:05:39
And and we talked to several pastors.
1:05:40
One guy said don't do it. And he said ever since we
1:05:43
started it, I'll get messages of people laying in bed and they'll
1:05:47
take a picture of their breakfast on their lap and say
1:05:50
great message. This morning pastor and they'll
1:05:51
have the the service on the TV. And he said, I've got people
1:05:55
that are watching from home and it's convenient for them when
1:05:58
they're not coming into church. And so you've got that, that
1:06:01
side of it. But then you've got others that
1:06:03
I was talking to a pastor and he said we started live streaming.
1:06:08
He said we had a visiting family and they came in, They knew my
1:06:11
name, they knew my wife's name, they knew my kids name.
1:06:14
They knew a lot of people in our church, not because they had
1:06:16
ever been, not because they're in the community.
1:06:19
They had just moved to the community eight months ago, he
1:06:22
said. But when he came up and
1:06:23
introduced me and he said we've been watching you online for the
1:06:26
last six months and we just wanted to see what type of
1:06:31
church you were. We agree with your church.
1:06:35
We're comfortable now stepping foot in your church.
1:06:37
We don't know who we're reaching.
1:06:39
We don't know who's watching. We don't know who is.
1:06:42
Is is just testing church out for the first time.
1:06:46
And so you know John asked me this just this yesterday we're
1:06:49
talking about live streaming because we're putting all these
1:06:51
things up. And and he said what's your
1:06:53
what's your average view? I said our average view is
1:06:56
between 80 to 100 when service ends on Facebook.
1:07:00
I said now by the end of the week, it's 2 to 300 people as
1:07:02
people share it and things like that.
1:07:04
But but there's an extra 80 to 100 people that are watching the
1:07:07
service. Whether they ever step foot in
1:07:10
the door, they're watching what's going on, whether that's
1:07:12
a minute clip, whether that's a 3 minute clip or whether they
1:07:14
watch the entire thing. They're watching part of our
1:07:17
service because they have an interest in some way, shape or
1:07:21
form. And I said, so it would be me to
1:07:23
due diligence to make sure what we're putting out there is
1:07:26
quality so that the gospel ultimately will be spread by any
1:07:30
means possible. What did Paul say?
1:07:32
I become all things to all men that I might reach some.
1:07:37
And that's what we're doing. We're taking the things that God
1:07:40
has given us in this day and age, through podcasts, through
1:07:44
video conferencing, through recording our voices, through
1:07:48
putting out a real. By all means we're trying to
1:07:50
reach some. That's 80 to 100 people.
1:07:56
Not just that's that's unchurched people. 880 to 100
1:08:01
unchurched people have watched your service while you're
1:08:05
preaching. They weren't in that service,
1:08:07
but they even if they just caught a glimpse, they caught a
1:08:10
clip. You know, whether they watch the
1:08:13
whole thing or they watch for 5 minutes there, it's still a
1:08:17
witness to them. And you can't deny, you know
1:08:21
there are naysayers out there that will, you know, decry
1:08:25
social media and streaming, but it's not going anywhere.
1:08:28
But it can be such an effective tool.
1:08:31
But you're right. You know, if you're going to do
1:08:34
it, do it right because you are representing Christ.
1:08:38
Absolutely. Well, it's been a great time
1:08:41
talking with you today. We've got some great things
1:08:43
coming up. We've got hopefully, Brian
1:08:45
Edwards in a couple weeks, Marcus Merritt's going to come
1:08:47
on. We're going to be talking about
1:08:49
colleges and seminaries, preaching COVID para church
1:08:53
ministries. We've got some great things
1:08:54
lined up. And so we hope you'll continue
1:08:56
to join us over the next couple of months as we wrap up this
1:09:00
series of in the church in May. And so until next time to God.
1:09:05
Not the pastor. Be the glory found.
1:09:08
My new name. Found that good grace.
1:09:12
Found that healing. And the tears fell down my face.
1:09:16
When I found my beginning. That has no ending.
1:09:18
Found that second chance. Found my best friend.
1:09:20
Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness.
1:09:22
I've been singing ever since I found my feet on me.
1:09:39
Thanks for listening to the For Freedom podcast.
1:09:42
If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking,
1:09:45
subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast
1:09:49
platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for
1:09:52
the For Freedom podcast.