Ask the Pastors S7 E5: "Why do we corporately worship the way that we do? (part 2)”
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Well, welcome to ask the pastors a segment of the West Hills Podcast where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded, pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff or
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Not. Ask your questions and we'll just answer questions we want to
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Answer. That's right. That's right.
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Well, again, with this one, part two, I think people have asked this. People have asked this. Just not in On a card. On a card, yeah.
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Yeah.
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We're going to make another, we had such a good response to our after the sermon. Like what? Almost 20 questions this morning.
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So many cards.
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Wild. We're going to do a push for now. We got that covered for Ask the Pastors and we'll just have so many great questions.
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That'd be awesome. Let's do it. Heck, you may know us. I'm Brian with our lead pastor Will. Hey and Thad. Hello pastor Tha and as Will mentioned, this is part two of our Why do we Worship the way that we do corporately? Why do we corporately worship the way that we do? And I think we're just talking. Before we started, we ended the flow of our service at the Pastoral Prayer. I think it was PS Song two, confession Assurance song three, and then that's kind where we ended I think. So picking up with the pastoral prayer.
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Yep.
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We could kind of do that. We're just kind of talking through the flow of our service do it and why we do it.
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Yeah,
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Pastoral prayer. Why did we do it?
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Can I ask a follow up question before that question? Absolutely. Why haven't we always done pastoral prayer?
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Great question.
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Because that's still relatively new to our church within the last year and a half.
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Oh, is it that much? No, man. At least two years, hadn't it? I don't know. Yeah, I think, I don't want to say it was 2023 starting anyway,
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It hasn't been that long.
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Yeah, I mean I guess you'd have to ask going back
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Folks
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Before me and I would suspect that, I don't know, I would I guess maybe suspect that maybe it felt to, I mean there was obviously a big
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Or what existed before. Yeah,
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I mean the seeker friendly kind of movement was strong in the church world I think in the nineties, early two thousands. And so I think there was anything like the name Baptist, Bethany Baptist of this church, and is anything that would've been perceived, do you not perceive that it could have turned people off to coming into the church and the faith that it might've pushed 'em away? So I think that that's where I would suspect that some of those kinds of things where it's like, hey, now we need you to sit still and listen and pray for three, four or five plus minutes. And it can definitely feel somewhat like an insider thing too, where it's like we are mentioning people at this church and praying for them by name, and so people could feel excluded. So I mean if your main thing was how do we structure our whole service around making this conducive to someone who, who's just coming back to church for the first time or something like that, then it's probably not something that you include.
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I was going to say, and do I recall again, whether it's two or three years, it would be third song, whoever's coming up to preach most often you scripture reading of the text and then prayer before diving in.
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I would pray Will would come up or whoever was preaching. Yeah, I
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Couldnt remember. Yeah. Yeah. We used to do short prayer from worship pastor as I was kind of transitioning up and then a lot of times either, so going back even farther offering, there's been different. At one point in time when I was associate pastor, I think I mentioned this, we were doing, after the opening worship set would have an announcements person come up,
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Do church announcements right there for three or four minutes and then pray over the offering and then pass offering plates and all of that before Gary had ever preached, and then there'd be a little instrumental music during the offering plates going around, and then Gary would make his way up and then usually begin with scripture and then dive right to the sermon. Now of all the things to me, and sometimes there was a minute where I want to say, I think I mentioned this, where we even were doing communion before the sermon, and to me, both of those that receiving communion and especially too just giving the passing, offering plates, giving our gifts before we've first received God's gift of the message. The gospel I think is, that was an easy one. We're not doing that because, and I think we might've even stopped that before I came in. It makes no sense. Our offerings are a responsive worship. I mean, I guess you could make the same claim maybe about even singing worship songs and so should we start the whole thing with the gospel and then all of the services a response. But I do think that some of those elements of communion and offering, but yeah, before we can give to pastoral prayer, I mean, well, I just brought up the issue of the plates. I mean, I grew up in, we didn't pass plates,
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Did do plates, bowls.
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No, we didn't. Maybe for special services maybe, but no, we had a offering box at the back, one big one that you'd drop on the way in way out.
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I grew up passing plates.
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You passed plates,
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Pass plates, definitely
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Middle of the service or at the end as a response
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Or middle
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Weird
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Passed the membership book and you'd all sign it, let people know.
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Oh, that too. Yeah, where you sign in. That's weird.
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Easy way to track attendance,
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But again, not that it's a good or bad reason to do it is a turnoff to visitors, but I mean, yeah, you're passing plates and asking for money before you've even performed for me and got up and said your piece from the pulpit. I don't know. I think
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It's not a tip for you, but I hear
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You. No, I'm saying, but as a visitor, I'm saying if I'm, I'm new to this and I don't know what's going on here, and now all of a sudden y'all are passing these plates around and everybody's dropping money in and I'm supposed to be dropping money in and the thing's only halfway done and what's going on, the whole thing is I don't know. And how do you square that? To me, the biggest thing, again, it's going back to the regulatory principle of what do we see in scripture?
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I mean if Jesus says, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing when you give given secret and all of that, you could really make the case that those offering boxes should be hidden around the church or something you're giving in secret. I mean, it's great that you have the online thing now, so nobody even knows definitely that you gave and how much you gave and whatever. We have the envelope, so at least there's that. But yeah, I think a lot of that is why we got rid of the passing of the plates and it is just more of a between you and God and in secret, but you still want to make it available for people. So I don't know anything else on the offering since we don't do that anymore.
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Well, sort of we as you leave offering, we mention it. Yeah, we mention it. I will say as a response, one potential negative to how we do offering and just how the church in general does offering now is a child could make the assumption my parents don't give because I never see them financially give, I've seen one church before where they pass plates where if you gave, they had not an envelope, but a special card that says I tithed online, that you could put in the plate as it passed. Again, I'm not saying pros or cons, I'm just saying as family discipleship, it's important to inform our children like, Hey, we give to the church. Again, that's an aside, but
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Yeah, I'm thinking back. I think my parents used to let me drop the check in the box or something just so even just the habit of doing it. Yeah, this is what we do, but
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We'll get to that. That's at the
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Very end if we have anything else on offering. Okay.
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We also don't do pastor room. Yeah, they also don't really do announcements.
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Not a lot. Now we will
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The way they used to be done. The way they used
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To. Yeah, I guess that is what I meant to say. Not a regular standing. Let's all he used be,
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Here's three things from 10, let's
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Here three things, three minutes, whatever. No, I mean for our bigger ones, and that gets tricky too. Obviously everybody's thing is a big thing to them, so how do you make those determinations about what's going to get airtime? But certainly the alt church stuff, certainly the outreach stuff, the Easter and the Christmas and fall festival and BBS and things like that. Quarterly meetings, quarterly meetings that we really want to push and get people to. I do think that the things that, for the folks that aren't already plugged in, again, that's where we want to be pushing people toward are our weekly newsletter, email our bulletins to where they're paying attention, where they should be paying attention to, where they don't rely on and need that in-person thing.
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But that's why I think for some of those announcements, entry point class, the new to West Hills, those kinds of things, we're going to especially promote just because they're by definition for newer people who might not yet be in the habit of checking those outlets for news. Yeah. But every once in a while, certainly the exciting ones of announcing and the big ones, new babies being born, I don't know. There might come a time in the life of the church when it is so much and the church is big enough that you just can't do as much of that kind of, I don't know what you want to call it, small church type of communal type of thing. I don't know. I kind of hope not. I think people enjoy, I think people have loved,
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Yeah, celebrating
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Often. Yeah, celebrating. I mean, I think a lot of our people who come over from the megachurches or whatever, appreciate that I'm in a church where members here are going to get prayed for by name in the service and where babies are celebrated publicly and like, oh yeah, I recognize that family. So yeah. Alright, so pastoral prayer.
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Yeah, pastoral prayer.
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Why do we do it? I wrote an article on it already, so
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I said my piece. Yeah, we can link it. I was going to read a big excerpt from it. TGC article, right? I do. I think we could list a lot of really great things. I do, and I hear from people often of people seeing the value and encouraged by the pastoral prayers that led by one of the elders after the singing, before going into a time of teaching and preaching of the word. And it kind of follows a couple different categories. We could think of it as a prayer of intercession in some ways that whoever is facilitating the pastoral prayer, it's a corporate, Hey, join me in prayer, pray alongside as I am praying. And some of the different categories that follow in that pastoral prayer are prayers of the people. What are the prayer requests of those at West Hills that we can be praying for?
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Lifting up those who either specifically having surgery, Lord, would you give the surgeons a skill? Those in specific groups, we could think of those who are experiencing sorrow, loss, specifically prayers for those who are in our church and a variety of categories, rejoicing, lamenting, weeping, interceding on behalf of, Lord, would you intervene in this? That's one category. Prayers of the people. We have a category for specific ministries of the church that are meant to lift up, not just Lord, would you plus our children's ministry, although that's a prayer we could pray, but kind of more specifically like, Hey, as the children this morning are learning about X, Y, Z,
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Would you help them to learn or see or believe the gospel for our seniors, seniors ministry? Would you help those who are seeking community amongst their stage of life where they feel less valued, may they feel valuable? So lifting up all the different specific ministries of the church, kind of starting concentric circles closely and then moving further out to pray for other local churches here in St. Louis that we are a big kingdom mindset. It's not just West Hills is the only gospel centered church here in St. Louis that we want to pray for the advancement of the gospel in all gospel centered churches in St. Louis area and pray for the pastors. I think at its best, it looks like even communicating with that pastor, Hey, we're praying for you and your church this week. How can we lift up specifically needs and been blessed by doing that?
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Then moving further out, pray for St. Louis as a whole, government officials, unrest, inclement weather, things that have happened, tragedies, lifting those up, moving further out the United States as a whole, again, depending on what's going on in the news cycles, what's going on in politics, what's going on, things that are on people's hearts or should be on people's hearts that we're praying, making them aware of further out. You think of the world as a whole, unrest, war, famine, disasters, and then even more in the world of our missionaries that we support. And then outside of that unreached people groups. Now someone who's listening might be like, well, I don't hear that every single Sunday. Well, if you did our pastoral prayers, it would be 10, 15 minutes long. But for the elder doing it, we are working on and improving and striving to make sure some of those categories are prayed for. Always prayers of the people. Oh, I forgot one more category. Also for the sermon and for the delivering of God's word. That's always at the close of transitioning of as we turn now to your word, would the spirit work and our hearts and make us more like Jesus? And so you'll hear different elders pray for different categories and whether those have been explicitly named, now I'm naming them for you, but again, that covers a wide variety of closest to the church and then to the whole world. It's
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Helpful. And in terms of why we do it, a wise person once said, there are five reasons to implement a pastoral prayer in your church. I'm just going to read mine. I'm screwing my bullet points. A pastoral prayer helps your church to know its leaders in your church, to know the church. And I do think that that was one, I mean one of the lowest hanging fruit, great things that we saw very quickly after implementing this two and a half years ago. Yeah, I checked it was May I think of 2023 that we started doing the pastoral prayer and was that we're always saying, Hey, if you got a prayer request or need or whatever, talk to one of the elders. Frankly, people didn't know we didn't do a membership class when I got to this church. It was here as a piece of paper, fill out this application. And so people didn't know who the leaders of the church were. It's a real problem. So anyway, making them more public, more visible, having that rotation I think is great, super helpful and frankly vice versa because you're asking the elders to pray for the members. They've got to
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Know
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You and I, we tend to be the full-time pastor elders who are the ones getting the requests from people, Hey, pray for such and such. He's my husband. He is going in for a heart ablation this week on Friday. So we pass that on to them and if the elders are like, who's that? Then it's an opportunity, okay, you should probably know this person. Or maybe they're newer or not a member or whatever. So that's why things like shout out, plug for putting your picture in our planning center people app and getting in the church center so that it helps us to know you. Oh yeah, put a name of the face and all that. Number two, a pastoral prayer helps your church to know one another. So not just elders knowing the people but people knowing the people and again, allows us to, I mean if you're going to pray along with that elder, and that's an important point is like this is not, we've talked about this with the elders and just training in this. It's just not praying in the first person singular, praying in the first person, plural not, but God, we lift our hearts up to you. You are praying on behalf of the people. This is not them listening in on your prayer. This is our collective prayer.
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That's good.
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And number three, pastoral prayer let's church members know that they're being prayed for. And I shared the story of one of our members here who after our very first and who's suffering from some help, pretty serious health stuff, and just so happened he was included in our very first pastoral prayer, I think it was in that May of 2023. He came up to me in the foyer afterward and said, I've been in church for 50 something years. That was the first time I've ever been publicly prayed for in a church context. And I thought, man, that shouldn't be the case. If you stick here long enough, we're going to find an excuse to pray for you out loud by name as a church. And so we've got work to do on that because it's easy to some people, we all need prayer. And I think there's probably churches that even kind of cycle through their membership directory. I've heard that in doing it that way. But
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Little plug for submitting prayer requests as well as just letting us know what's going on. So we won't always pray if you don't want us to mention the pastoral prayer, but we would love to pray for you.
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Yeah. Fourth one, a pastoral prayer models, how to pray. So elders are supposed to be examples to the flock. I think one of the best ways we can do that is in prayer. This is Jesus taught us how to pray. So he gave us a model prayer. But I think what we're doing in that pastoral prayer, like you said, is walking through those categories is modeling. This is what prayer could look like. It's not just always about me, my concerns and that small kind of focus, like no, we're praying interceding for others and expanding our horizons even beyond just praying for my family. And how about for my brother, sister's family and my life group? How about for the folks at the other church? How about folks for outside in our community at St. Louis and the world and all of that. So I think it's good, especially the missional part. We're always pushing our people to be more missional, to be thinking in terms of, yeah, including the unreached peoples in there is
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Reminding ourselves there are whole swaths of millions, billions of people that have little no access to the gospel. And I think you could say, how are they going to hear unless someone goes and preaches. But at the same time, what does Jesus saying in Luke 10, two, the harvest is plentiful. Laborers are few. So what he doesn't actually say go. He says, so pray, pray and ask that God would raise up workers and send 'em. So it starts with prayer. Then lastly, a pastoral prayer helps your church to commune with God. Basically just tied it together there in my article by saying we can't pray too much. So building in that more than just a 22nd worship pastor. Now God settle our hearts for your word. But more than that, no, let's really sit down
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And
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Meet with God as his people through prayer right now. So yeah, that's why we do. That's are
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Great points. So good. That was a TGC article,
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Right?
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The name of that
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For the people. I think it was five reasons Your church service should include Pastoral prayer by Will Deval
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July 7th. So good if you just search Will Deval on TG C'S
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Website. There's only four or five articles I've done. They'll find it.
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Yeah, well said. Really good. I love the opportunity to know who the elders are. I've heard that from other people, just I know who the elders are, but people that are coming in there who are the leaders and you see 'em, it's just so
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Good. So we've done a whole walking through now ready for sermon. We've done a whole thing on how we choose the sermon series. We choose. That's true. But I don't know. It occurs to me there's probably other questions related to the sermon that people have. Why do we aim for 45 to 50 minutes is most of ours, Tim Keller preached for 37, 38.
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Always
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Points. Most will say that especially with attention, shrinking attention spans and our modern age. Most preachers can't go more than about 35 minutes and stay. Interesting. Most listeners can't go more than about 35 minutes and stay active, engaged. So are we pushing 'em too much going an extra 10, 15? Certainly. I mean, if we ever got to the point where we were trying to squeeze in a third service on a Sunday, you'd have to look at shaving time somewhere. So what do you think about that
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Sermon length? He's looking at you, Brian.
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He was looking at me. I'm going to have to pause and use the bathroom. Do y'all want
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Oh, go
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For it. Y'all can keep recording without me. If you want to just do the video,
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You can come back in after that love. Yep.
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Y'all just covered that one
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For me. As he steps out and we actually have and the
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Worship team come up
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And the worship team play another song and play another song. That's a throwback right there. If you know season four, ask the pastors episodes, 22 to 25 will did What is preaching class too could be helpful for those that are listening that would like a little bit of a deeper dive into how the preaching pastors prepare, why they do what they do, how they prepare for it. A lot of why involved in that too. I think my dad listened to that one and really enjoyed it, really helped by it. So that's one that I think could be really helpful.
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Yeah, I encourage, even if you have no aspirations or desires to preach ever, it could just be helpful to even hear a little bit more of the thought process behind what's going on in that. I think some of the timing of it is a little bit of calling people to more, like you think of students who are in school, 50 minutes is a typical class period of time as well as some of it does come back to who is the Sunday morning sermon for. And so I think we could put it in two kind of categories for the believer coming, for the equipping of the saints as well as calling those who are seeking, looking, hearing. And then I think there's a reason why it's, we're probably more averaging 42 minutes as of late versus 52, closer than closer to an hour of starting to shave some of it. And sometimes the length of sermon just depends on length of the text or even just what's going on.
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Length of preparation.
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Length of preparation.
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The interesting thing is the more time I have or take to prepare, the shorter it gets. Yeah. Because I'll always go, if I have the time, I'll go back and I'll try and trim and just make it better. It's like you cut out a little bit of the dead weight here and there,
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But yeah, what you said last thereabout, and I missed the first part, but the last thereabout just who's it for? To me, this is hopefully your feasting on God's word all throughout the week or feeding at least. But this is the feast. This is really like when Jesus tells Peter to feed my sheep and Jesus says, we don't live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from God. I mean we are consuming, we're feeding on God's word and a sermon should be the feast. And I've heard pastors use that analogy too and play it out more of just like your job as a preacher is you're a chef and you're preparing their spiritual food and don't just heat up frozen microwaveable dinners, let
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'em cook,
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Spend the time and anyway. So yeah, to me with that, it's like I hope obviously the people who are here are here, they've stuck around. They could have said, well, 50 minutes is too long and we're going to go find a church with 30 minute sermons. But
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Can I add one more aspect to that?
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Yeah.
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As well, you think of the diet of a normal, probably average attender here of what they're consuming all week long, hour plus long podcast hours of scrolling on social media, watching of the news a calling them to, you've spent all of this other time consuming other things. Is it too much to consume an hour and a half, 75 minute long sermon, specifically focusing the majority of that time on God's word? Yeah,
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75 minute service, 80, 82 minute service and 50 of it being the sermon or 48 or whatever. But yeah, I agree. And the encouraging thing to me is like I said, that people seem to be hungry for God's word. And I really believe that. I want to believe that if we did have to go and add a third service at some point in the future, we're doing this whole renovation. So hopefully we can kick that can down the road a while. But if it came to it and we did that and out of necessity we had to shorten from 80 to 83 minute service most weeks lately to a tight 72 minute service or something, and we're shaving 10 minutes off the sermon, let's say that there would be people that would be have a problem with that. That's 10 minutes less of feast that we're going to get. Yeah. So there's no perfect sermon
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Length
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Anyway. That's a lot about length.
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We stand for the reading of God's word.
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Yeah. That
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Occurred to me,
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You
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Preaching pastor, usually you will say that every Sunday stand out of reverence for God's word as
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You are able,
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As you're able,
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You're able to, yeah. And you see that in scripture at places too. You think of Ezra having him stand for the whole time the book of the law was read,
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So it was good and biblical too. But yeah, just a sign of reverence. I guess the old, we were at a funeral this past weekend, and I guess some of the tradition there is standing for the reading of the gospel specifically. Because a lot of times in the lectionary you'll have three readings, old Testament, new Testament, epistle, and then gospel, and then you stand for the gospel kind of thing. But it's all God's word and it's all deserves to be respected, revered. And again, that's not to say that churches that don't do that are somehow less than or unbiblical or whatever. It's just if we can give our people just one more visible, tangible, bodily sort of reminder that this is different. This is different than everything else you come across content-wise while you're scrolling and the rest of your life and everything else, even in the service, you can sit down when I'm talking, but when God's talking, we're going to visibly model our respect for his word.
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And I've only had one person ever ask me why we stand for scripture. My daughter, when she started attending, why do we stand? Why do we sit and then why do we? And it gave me an opportunity for her to explain, again, her church experience is largely just this church and now introducing her to sitting in the worship gathering on Sunday asking that question, why do we do that?
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And don't always, again, it's not going back to this past week's sermon and Galatians four and legalism. And
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It's not just on the list of dues that you have to do. And if you don't, whatever, because there's times, I'd say, especially honestly on Easter, Christmas Eve, where we're trying to be more attentive to what are people not wanting people to feel like, oh wait, everybody else knows what's going on here and I don't know what's going on. So I feel like an outsider. And also people that probably, frankly, if they have religious experience, maybe it's Lutheran and Episcopalian, whatever, where it's high church and they're used to all the standing, kneeling, ritualistic stuff that maybe they were trying to get away from. There's times when we get away from it or frankly just practically if it's, I mean, sometimes we've done long passages, like a couple chapters or 70 plus verses where it's like
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People are going to be standing for seven, eight minutes and sometimes then you're making that determination, am I really going to read this whole thing? But yeah, and sometimes you do and it's like, yeah, of all of this, I'm going to talk about it for 40 minutes, but we can spend seven minutes reading it because it's God's word and it deserves to be read and to be heard. And then sometimes you fast forward through certain parts because there is repetition or it's not the main point of the sermon or the text or So anyway, what else? When it comes to the sermon?
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The sermon,
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Yeah, I mean there's this whole, we could and we've posted when I did the, we referenced that the preaching, oh, did you? The preaching class, kind of training that thing. Like even practical things of implementing humor or why we to do or not to do or why we introduce things this way, story joke, try and get attention why we are expository in our preaching and we're in 99% of the time just going through books of the Bible line by line.
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Just one more that we do. And I've heard different iterations of this question, why do we preach the gospel every week? And part of the question someone's asking is why are you always calling people to respond to the gospel in a self way, which is true, but I also think, I don't remember which pastor I heard it from, but I keep a little note above my computer screen answering the question, why do I preach the gospel every week to convict all need to hear of the wages of sin, to invite some are hearing it for the first time to remind, most need to be reminded of it every week. I would add everyone needs to be reminded every week and forth to assure some may be hearing the glories of the gospel for the last time. Now why do we preach the gospel every week? Because the gospel speaks to all of those aspects of a person's life, whether they've rejected the gospel up to this point in are responding, but also we need to be reminded of it
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Weekly. That's good. Yeah, I agree. I could add to it. I could say that Jesus says in Luke 24 and in John 10 35 that you search the scriptures, you don't realize they're looking for life. They point to me, he says in Luke 24, he explains on the road to Emmaus, to his disciples, all the things in the scriptures and the law in the prophet concerning himself. So time and time again, Jesus is saying all of it, the Old Testament, it's all about me say the same thing, certainly for the New Testament.
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All of it is there to point us to Jesus. And so if you don't give him Jesus, you've missed the point of the passage no matter what the passage is now. And when I say Jesus, I mean life, death, resurrection, I mean the gospel. So that's one reason. I mean, just if you want to be a faithful, accurate interpreter of the text, you haven't done it if you haven't brought it back to the gospel. But then also beyond that too, and I'd say this in my article on why I lead a sinner's prayer every week. And part of it for me is, and I got real convicted about it, listening to Mark Dever, reflect on why he preached the gospel every sermon. And he talks about just a very personal example of this congregant and his church who had literally come into a sort of half-life crisis and realizing, I need something.
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There's got to be more to life. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to start going to church and see if they've got answers for what my heart is looking for, longing for. And he tells the story of this poor woman going from one church to the next and leaving them and just not getting her heart's deepest questions answered. And so Deborah talks about, and her testimony was finally she came to Capitol Hill Baptist where he's pastor and he shares that obviously, and not in a way that's like patting himself on the back, but just in a way that reminding himself and others, this is why I preached the gospel. Imagine if the Sunday that she came to Capitol Hill was the one Sunday I was like, eh, I mean they all kind of know the gospel probably, and we're in Deuteronomy chapter 16 or whatever.
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I mean, you don't need the gospel to understand this. It's like, no, I mean that woman, to your point, to convict us, to encourage us, to remind us to all those things, to save us. She needed the gospel that day that she was there to convict and save her and praise God. She got it. And so that to me was like, okay. I mean, if I had any questions about it, then that sells it for me. This is why we're always going to not only preach the gospel, but lead people in a prayer that invites them, calls on them to respond to the gospel with humble saving faith and other pastors preachers that I really respect. John Piper doesn't preach the gospel and most of his sermons, it's like he's just, anyway, he's just one. But others, just philosophically, they're like, my job is to explain this particular text. And that's where again, I go back to the Jesus saying, it's all about me and not just me generally, but me specifically the gospel. So anyway, what else we got sermon wise or we've done enough on that? I know we've talked about preaching in sermons a lot in other podcasts,
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Sermon, prayer after the sermon.
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You touched on that. Yeah, an invitation to respond, reflect typically before starting that prayer of give you a moment to sit with respond, reflect time, sometimes going right into it. There's no right or wrong way to do that.
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Yeah,
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Right before communion,
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Right? Yeah, I've tried to, it kind of depends on where and how the sermon ended, both in terms of the tone and the exhortation or invitation, as well as the timing and how much where we're looking at on time. Typically with me, it's already, if it's second service, 1156 or 12 o'clock already, and I'm thinking, oh man, we still have
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Communion, closing song,
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Commissioning, however long I pray, plus communion plus, yeah, closing song plus announcements, commission like sending out. So a lot of times we will just jump straight in. But yeah, to your point, if we have time to give people a chance to, why don't you take a moment and let God's word that you've just heard preached, sink in, soak in it.
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Let the spirit stir your heart,
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How to respond. How has God calling you? Yeah, what does God want you to do with this? But then a prayer, obviously, maybe I shouldn't say it's a dual, dual prayer, shouldn't say obviously, because again, I was at this Episcopal funeral over the weekend and they didn't pray after the homily. But yeah, no, I mean for us, obviously we would say obviously that God's spirit has to do the work. I can preach the world's best sermon ever. I can't, but I mean someone can. And without God's spirit like taking that seed and planting it down in their heart, it does no good and practic personally for this person. So we're asking God once again to do that like we did before, prayer, the sermon, and then after God, would you use this message to change us, those who are already believers, to change us more and sanctify us and into more Christ-like believers, those who are not believers, to change them into becoming believers and to change their hearts. So one of the questions I've definitely gotten is why don't we do altar calls? Why don't we,
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Just as I am, play a couple of times on the piano,
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I don't think we've done one since I've been at the church ever before me associate pastor, lead pastor. I don't think we've ever, we have a couple times, I don't know, we're always inviting and saying, Hey, we have elders and prayer team members down front after the service, you want to pray with someone. Those kinds of things.
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If had a call to be baptized one Sunday,
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But yeah, I called to raise your hand, come forward, whatever. Again, it's not bad. You want to anyone speak to that
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One? I don't think there's an explicit biblical command to do. There's a command for people to respond as God's word has been faithfully preached. God's people must respond to it.
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I think everyone should have a response to the faithful preaching of God's word every Sunday. Again, that isn't always a complete change of action or behavior. Sometimes a response is finding comfort in the gospel, reflecting on what Jesus has done, growing in your relationship with the Lord. Sometimes it is a response to, I need to confess this sin. I need to be convicted of this. I need to grow in X, Y, or Z. So I think there always is a response, oh, one negative reason for not doing an alter call is the potential manipulation factor that I grew up experiencing of every head, bow, every I'd close, and raise your hand if you want to accept Jesus. And I've seen far too many times where there is no hand raise and someone's up there saying, I see that hand. I see that hand. There's hand
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All over. I've had that once that I've experienced. Yeah, but multiple times. That's crazy.
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I grew up in some weird circles. That's
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Crazy. That's there's nothing grosser to me
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In the world as well as the potential of someone feeling manipulated into going forward. I'll say I've experienced one sort of alter call that was the most appealing to me at a summer camp of, I think you were there where the speaker said, Hey, we're not going to do heads bowed, eyes closed. He said, if you want to respond and believe the gospel for the first time, I'm going to invite you to stand up in a moment because this is a room where everyone is for you and not against you. And if you can't stand up in this room and say, I want to follow Jesus, you're probably not ready to follow after Jesus.
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Definitely not standing up when you get home back
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Here. School. Exactly. And that was his whole point. But a lot of it, it's for those who are new to the church, it's like people are going forward, people are raising hands. What am I supposed to do? I've seen times in services where kids have raised their hand and then someone follows up and they're like, I don't know why. Why'd you raise your hand? I don't know why other people were doing it. So there's more negatives. I think there's the potential for more harm than good.
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Yeah,
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I agree.
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Yeah. I think
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There could be positives to it too.
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I think we also, in our context of our church, I just don't know that, and maybe this is me being faithless and doubting and whatever, but no one's ever told me I prayed and receive Christ and was saved today, ever in my 10 years of being here. So I don't want to say it's irrelevant or
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This was the point. But I do think the bigger thing is, and some will say, well, maybe that's, you're not giving 'em the right opportunity. Do it this way. And people will start to, I don't know. But what I would say is, to your point about the negatives, I think definitely can feel manipulative, I think. And I've heard from some people who when they're asked their testimony, they will tell you about the aisle they walked and the date and the camp and the this and that. And I think it's wonderful. I think it's awesome to have that level of dislike, man. I know that that is
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When my life changed. But for the majority, I would say others, it's not necessarily that definitive. So I think that painting it in that way can, number one, maybe. So seeds of doubt for people who don't have that clear cut of a, I mean it was more of a gradual, some people use the analogy of the dimmer switch kind of fading up instead of the light switch of an altar call. But I think the bigger thing that I would point to is, and again, you can, it's not a potential fears of things. It's not. It's like we could go back to the baptism thing and baptizing children and were they really saved? And second guessing, is it safer to wait and you don't want to
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Do
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Or not do things in the church or anywhere just out of fear or something. But I do think that you certainly run the, I'll put it this way. I know a lot of people, maybe myself included, who walked an aisle many years ago, and because of that, they think they're good with God and they're not. Now I say maybe myself included, because in my testimony, I mean, I can look back and realize I had that moment. Now I want to be charitable to myself and to others. And I think God really was doing something in my heart then. But it can become a work. We're going through Galatians right now. Walking the aisle can just become the evangelical version of coins in the coffer in Luther's Day. Paying your penance and doing your work, doing your thing, saying the magic center's prayer. So I think that's part of my hesitation. And I don't know, we're still working out this whole reform theology and no one comes to me unless I'm called again. It's not a magic prayer, you pray. It's God drawing, calling your heart. It's not an aisle. You walk and you deciding to ask Jesus into your life. He doesn't need your permission. I mean, I don't know. There's so much theological stuff. We could, maybe it's a different episode.
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One last, or like you said, the potential of, I think of other people's stories where they just walk the aisle a lot of times and where that's me, someone doesn't actually gain real assurance that they are, I didn't get real assurance sealed and sanctified or it's a living, a hidden life as sentence like, well, I walked the aisle one more time or that Sunday, and I think we're going to have to wrap this up a little bit.
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Yeah, what you're thinking. Oh, we got
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Be two part three.
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I got five minutes. No.
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Well, we've got communion. Communion. We didn't talk baptism because that's not an every Sunday closing song. Commissioning. I've got 10
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Minutes. Okay,
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We could do it.
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Let's do it.
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Okay. Cheer you on. Communion. Is that what's next? Convenient.
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That comes next after our prayer
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Recently going back to passing plates.
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Yep.
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I've really enjoyed that. The crinkle cup. The crinkle cup. Why don't we use the crinkle cup anymore?
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Oh yeah, we had the,
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It was a COVID era during COVID.
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Yeah, just germ stuff. Yeah, but it's been a while. It's been a while now passing the plates. We could do a whole nother thing on communion. Why do we do it every Sunday? Yeah, why do we do the
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Use we
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The way we do? And instead of coming forward and not a bread, not buying, not bread and wine, we could just do a whole, have we done? Sure. I think we may have done one on while we do communion every Sunday, maybe back in the day. Why do we do it?
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You tell me that because Jesus tells us to,
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Not every week, he just said, well
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Do this in remembrance of me. And so we, in communion, we are now physically remembering the gospel. Like it's a tangible, just to be clear, no click bait. We're not saying that it is the actual blood and body of Jesus, but as our senses are participating, it's meant to remind us of the spiritual nourishment that we gain and receive from Jesus so that we do it in the way that Jesus instructed his disciples in the upper room. And as Paul her minds, one Corinthians 11, that it visibly proclaims Christ's death until he comes again. We remember his sacrifice on the cross. It's another way for us to preach the gospel to ourselves. We've sung the gospel, we've read the gospel, we've heard the gospel, we've tasted the gospel
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And we commune with him and experience. That's part of what I collectively
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Good reminder this past Sunday.
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Sunday.
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You don't have one, I don't think. Not that I'm seeing. Wow.
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Okay.
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That's disappointing. I hadn't asked the pastors.
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Well, if somebody listens and they're like, you tried to squeeze it into five minutes, you should do a whole thing on that, then we'll do it. So I will say there's a couple, the short answer to why we do it every Sunday, to be honest, practical is
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The unbiblical reason.
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Well, they were already doing it when I got here, and I don't have a compelling reason to say we're doing too much communion. It's like prayer. You can't do too much of it. I mean, it's kind of like all of it, preaching, worship, why four songs? But again, our service could last three hours. But then again, you have to draw the line somewhere because you are trying to be respectful of the fact that people have other things going on. And you want unbelievers to be invited and to come and to not feel trapped. And so an hour 15 to hour and a half, alright, okay, we're squeezing a line into this, but that communion, yeah, there's other things there where it gives you that chance. If we didn't take a moment after the prayer, it gives you that chance for 90 seconds while their trays are being passed around to have a moment to sit, reflect, pray, worship, soak in the gospel,
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Which is what you should be doing during that time of while you're waiting, you should not just passively be sitting there. It should be a responsive time. Reflective time,
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Yeah. Communing with God. It's communion. And we do that through Christ, through participation in his body, literally and figuratively. So what else? Communion. Why don't we use bread and wine Again? A lot of it, frankly, with a lot of this is practical. It's a tangible thing that gets real practical. And so I think, again, we can do a whole longer one if you want. And it would be fun to have Austin therefore too. But I think of all the ways that I've received and participated in communion, I think my preference and favorite would be come forward, be served just like Jesus served us. Not take but receive. I prefer that. And you have to come forward. So there is an aspect of a response in faith, like it requires you to stand and to come forward. That's almost kind of like the altar call thing we're talking about. And bread is better than cracker. Jesus said, I'm the bread of life. I'm not the cracker of life. I'm
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The not those trader Joe's crackers we used
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To use. Well, they're good. Those we used to have. The Trader Joe's is good. They just don't fit in the little cups. And so frankly, again, it's practical. How do you get, we're already pushing 82, 83 minutes. So how do we get this two people in the most expeditious way possible. And so that's a big part of the reason we don't do the come forward thing too. And so I say, oh, I'd prefer this. But then if somebody said, okay, so you're going to shave an extra three minutes off the sermon every week, it'll take that much longer on top of the communion we already do. Oh man, maybe I'll stick with the 45 minute sermon.
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And then there's a balcony. Do you have a separate setup in the balcony
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Handicap? And if there's any number of things and the folks that feel awkward, that sit there, that don't, I mean we're already saying, Hey, if you're not a believer most weeks,
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It's more obvious if
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You don't come forward. But I'm fine with that. Other people, I think it's great. You're drawing a line in the sand. Who's in, who's out? How do you respond to Jesus? But yeah, why do we do grape juice and not wine? People struggle with alcoholism. Yeah. I mean, to me that's the biggest issue. You could get into practical things too, I guess, of cost and whatever. But yeah, kids and alcoholics and whatever, not want to temp people or trigger people. So yeah. What else? I don't know. Anything else there with the community? I mean, there's lots more that we could talk about
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When someone submits that question, we
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We'll do more, dig deeper. So then after that
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Closing song.
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Closing song, try and be responsive to the message.
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Trying think, go home. Singing the sermon
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Is the goal. Exactly. And you and I always team, team up on that. I'm trying to give you input. Here's where I think the message is going to end. Overall theme of the message. What do we have in the repertoire? That kind of thing. Again, I always think it's funny when people are like,
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That song, it so perfect.
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It's like, did you think that was an accident? Do you think that we just,
(01:02:39):
Brian just spin the wheel in his
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Office? Yeah, we canceled early. Yeah. Yeah. Musical Spin the wheel man.
(01:02:47):
Do a great job sharing direction and theme and or that, or whoever's preaching, usually you will. But so fun having a song that's like you go home, sing one of the main points of the message. I love that.
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I enjoy you and I connecting on that and trying to build the whole service around the text. That's the centerpiece.
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Like this past Sunday, death was arrested. That chorus is just sticking with me on Monday afternoon. I was like,
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Oh yeah, your grace. So free
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Washes over me. Made new, got it
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Made. I'm free. Free forever free and the freedom. But now Austin's appreciate about freedom and Galatians five too, and dang, he's got to find a new freedom song. So anyway, great. Commission else. That song after that
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Commissioning.
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Yeah. Yeah. Well,
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How do we recite the,
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I mean, we could go through all those announcements, hopefully most of 'em are
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Pre request connection card.
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We want to pray for you, we want to know you connection card.
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We want to answer your questions.
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We want to pray for you, fill out a prayer. We want to answer your questions. Fill out a podcast card.
(01:03:54):
We want to know how you're applying the sermon.
(01:03:55):
Yeah. Application. Application. So it is these calls to basically engage beyond Sunday, engage through letting us pray, engage through giving, engage. You're giving is going to empower ministry that goes beyond just today. So all these response things, take it with you. Sundays is not just about what happens here in these 75 minutes, which leads to the commission as well. And we did do a whole nother,
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I was going to make a plug, ask the pastor number 32, why do we recite the same benediction each Sunday
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So we can relink that and you can listen to that and make the deeper case for that. The Matthew 28, go and make disciples of all nations.
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We're sending people out, as you have heard, received, go and share the same
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Gospel. I think that's, yeah, the short version is we gather in order to scatter. I love the churches that have, and we talked about, I might do it having the plaque or even the sign as you're leaving our parking lot driveway,
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St. Paul's that has that.
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You are now entering the mission, which frankly, the only thing if you want to push back is church is the mission field too. Hopefully you're bringing those unbelievers with you. And so even Sundays, it is all the mission field. So it's not like you leave it necessarily when you come to church, but you get the point.
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Go in peace. You are sin. All of yes,
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Go make disciples. Take it and do something with it. Do what Jesus told you to do with it.
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Boom. That's the end of the service.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That's it.
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Absolutely. Yep.
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We could talk about,
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I've got some
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More ideas.
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Well,
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We could talk about why we do the stuff in the foyer we do and fellowship, and I don't
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Know if you have the question, please ask it.
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Please ask it. Or other questions.
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We would love to answer
(01:06:04):
Them. Absolutely. And pastorally sensitively,
(01:06:07):
You can submit those at the info bar. You can submit those on our website at www.westhillssdl.org. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening, and Lord billing, we will catch you right back here next week.