Ask the Pastors S8 E6: “Theological Triage pt.3: Corporate worship, church membership, diversity, historical Adam, and more”
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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. My name is Brian. I'm our host and one of the pastors and joined by our lead pastor, Will. What's up? And Pastor Thad. Hey, everyone. And recording on Tuesday morning, on this Tuesday morning. On a dreary
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Morning. It's brutal. Too much rain, not enough sun.
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Hard to wake up, man. This can be our chance. I'm going to wake up right now. Yeah. Some theological
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Triage. Part three.
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Wake you up. Yeah.
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So continuing our list of topics to triage.
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And we're going to remind everyone what that means just in case they're hopping in midstream, right?
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Sure.
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You want to remind them, Brian? What
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I have written down, and if it's not what we're actually using as categories, just correct me. First, we can't disagree with this and be a Christian. It's essential to the gospel.
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So the definition of theological triage.
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Great.
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Is the ability to differentiate between relative levels of importance of beliefs held as a believer, right? So a belief of first order importance would be what?
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You can't disagree with this and be a Christian. It's essential to the gospel.
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Okay. Yeah.
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Number two, you can be Christians, but it's important enough to go to different churches.
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Second order
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Doctrine. Okay. Number three, you can be at the same church and maintain relationships and be members together. Third tier.
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Okay. We would say all of these are important. What we're trying to help think through is to what level of importance. So for example, last episode we talked about end times. I think it's important to have a position on end times, but that is far below level of importance of some of the other things that we've talked about.
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Yeah.
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Sure.
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Yeah. Jumping in. Good stuff. Let's do it.
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Our first one is Christians must attend corporate worship.
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You know what I found interesting in thinking through this one is that ... I'll just jump in. Is that if we disagree ... The idea, if we disagree on this, can we be at the same church?
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Depending on how much we disagree, you're not at this church, you're not in any church. You could really disagree and think Christians don't have to attend worship. Well, then you're probably not at a church. So it's a moot point, right? But I guess theoretically, it's possible for a Christian to personally choose to attend worship and to be a part of our church, let's say, but not necessarily think that every Christian must do that or something. And so they wouldn't take a real strong stance on, well, yeah, every Christian must be attending corporate worship. I mean, obviously, I think we'd have to really drill in on this one, we'd have to probably ask some follow-up questions of like, "Well, how often? Christians must attend corporate worship every Sunday?" I don't even believe that. PSA, by the way, if your kids are sick, please stay home. Please don't bring them to our kids' ministry.
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This has been the worst cold and flu season in Missouri State history, and I'm sick of my family being sick. So my wife had to miss four Sundays this winter. Somebody in your family needs to miss. Quit bringing your kids to our kids' men sick.
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Tier one.
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So that's a tier one issue for me. Get out of our church. You're just not even saved if you are that unloving towards your brothers and sisters and their families. But no, in all seriousness, must attend corporate worship. Where would you put it?
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Tier two. And I think some of that is, it's self-eliminating if someone doesn't hold to this. If they put this in a tier three category, they're most likely not a church, have a low view of the corporate gathering and what it is that Jesus is stating, which it feels different than some of the other tier two things that we've labeled. But I think it's important enough that it will have a determining factor on church attendance, church participation, a view of membership, kind of things like that.
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Certainly when it comes to something like membership. I would say if it said church members must attend corporate worship, then for me it would be tier two. As it's written, for me, I would say tier three, because I can think of a handful of folks that call themselves Christians and they haven't joined our church, and they come once every other month or whatever. And it's like, do I think that's healthy, good? Would I encourage and pray for them to come more than that and to join the church so that there's accountability to hold them to that? All those kinds of things? Yes. But am I going to pull them aside and say, "Hey, you clearly disagree that Christians ought to be here more than once a quarter, so I think you need to go to another church." I would say no. I would say I'd rather them be here when they can be here and still have whatever, again, what I would consider not as much conviction as they should about being here more regularly.
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And I'll try and keep talking with them about that. I would say practically though, on a functional level, like you said, that I would agree from the standpoint, and we tell people this in our entry point. In our newcomer class, again, a lot of these people, you're probably talking about the peripheral enough, they're not even going to come to something like that, but we do tell people unapologetically like, "Hey, look, if you're looking for the kind of church that you can come once a month, slip in late, leave early, be on the back row, not join a small group, not serve, et cetera, et cetera." This is probably not the church for you. It's not the kind of culture. It's certainly not going to be okay for members of our church to have that level of disengagement. So yeah, on a sort of cultural level of what you're looking for in a church, I think most of those kinds of folks, for instance, just at West Hills, they're going to self-select out.
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And I think that's part of why I put it there because they're going to choose to go elsewhere. And again, I don't know how much of this is really a triage question of a spiritual maturity question that as someone grows in their spiritual maturity and their certification, their answer to this question is going to determine where they are on a spiritual health skill.
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And then what kind of church they want to be a part of, a more healthy biblical church.
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Yeah. Maybe it's a church with a huge online ministry where they don't actually gather in person all the time and they're maybe just staying on livestream though they have the full ability to come and to gather in person, but they're choosing to gather online. It feels like that wouldn't be our church. So I'd probably have to add tier two. If you're looking for a church where you can slip in and out, like you said, membership, it's probably not our church might be best for you to go to a different one, especially for, like you said, members specifically. I think that's a good distinction too.
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Yeah. So for me, I would just differentiate on this one between ideologically and practically or functionally.
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Christians must be members of a church.
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You want to go first this time? One of y'all.
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I said tier three. I said tier three. So I feel like we have people here that are really engaged and active and very life giving to the community that are really building up the church. I wish they'd become members, but we could still be at the same church and enjoy fellowship with each other.
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Yeah. Tier three. Totally agree. Yep. What do you think? Tier three. I think those who opt out of membership though, again, nalnourished- Do yourself in service. Yeah, disservice in that. And the church of disservice as well. But yeah, tier three. Yeah.
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Good.
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Quick and easy.
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Awesome. Next one. Churches should have diversity, ethnicity, age, economic, et cetera.
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You want to go first this time? We'll just keep rotating.
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I struggle with this one, not from a ... I'll give two categories. I think too often when talking about issues like this, people go political instead of theological, and that's where so much issue and controversy allows itself.
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I also, in thinking about this question, can picture churches in certain areas where like small rural churches where diversity is just not possible or feasible and to not be dismissive of those churches or pastors who are doing really good, faithful, plotting work for the Lord, and it's just impossible. I put this more in a kind of tier three category because of that, but I think it deserves an importance in it. I don't think it should be the soul driving ministry factor or philosophy of ministry, but churches should be reflective of the kingdom of God as best they can in their specific geographical, socioeconomical levels. Context? Yeah.
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Yeah. I'll say on this one, I would say somewhat similar to what I said about the corporate worship where I would say on just a philosophical basis, maybe third tier, on a practical basis, I would actually, just if I had to say one word, I would say second tier for me. For the reason that, again, not because diversity is such a important issue that I'm not sure we can be on, again, a theological level, but I think that week after week, if I as the pastor, this is really important to me and you're hearing it every week from the pulpit and it's not at all important to you. And I'm making decisions. We're as elders making decisions intentionally to sacrifice other things to make our church more diverse that puts you at odds with kind of the direction we're headed as a church or on the flip side of that, if it's really important to you and you're in the pews and you, every week you're showing up, you're like, "This church is so white and what are we doing to address that?
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" And you'd never hear about it from the pulpit. You never see any decisions being made to address that, what you perceive as being an issue. I just think over time, it's going to, again, put you at odds with kind of the vision and direction of the church. Again, a cultural kind of thing that is going to wear on either you or, again, the pastor. I mean, almost like, I mentioned after the sermon podcast and to get political for a moment, just like if you think ... I mean, this would be another great one to add to the list, is the belief that pastors should never talk about politics, like politics should never come into the sermon. I would say if that's you, to me, that's a second tier issue because I mentioned something political in every sermon, and I think that's totally appropriate and biblical and godly, if you don't, that's going to wear on you to a point where it's like, you're just kind of waiting in a 45 minute sermon, like what's going to be the like 30 second little clip that's going to get me all been out of shape this week.
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And it's like, just maybe just go to ... Now, if we were in the middle of North Korea where there's like three churches in the whole country or something, then we'd have a whole different triage list. All of a sudden, most things become third tier there, but I think as it is where we've got gospel churches every mile of the interstate in every direction, it's like you can find a church that's a better fit where you're just not going to be, where you're not going to be at odds and rubbing me the wrong way with your emails and me rubbing you the wrong way every Sunday. Again, that's my kind of view of the diversity one, especially because it's such a public and visible kind of issue. You know what I mean? It's not like your view of the rapture, which can be out of mind, but it's like I'm coming into this physical space and I'm seeing nothing but white people every week or I'm seeing more and more diversity and it's like, well, I don't know.
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And yeah, again, it's not just about skin tones. You're also talking age and like- Socioeconomic age. And so again,
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I- It's like if this church is all 20s and 30s and like, oh, where are the old people?
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Where's the wisdom? It's going to play a factor. But again, that's why I put it third tier but important based on context. For our context here, town and country, I think it is more important than it is in wherever you went on vacation, Brian in the middle of nowhere, Missouri. I think it has a different level of importance here than it does there or in Idaho or Montana where there just isn't an allowance for more diversity or just size of town or
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Whatever.
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Yeah.
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I think if the question had been churches must have diversity, I think it might have been tier two for me should seems to be kind of an open-handedness. So I would lean towards tier three. This person believes that diversity is important, but there seems to be some element of non-urgency. But if it was must, I'd say tier two.
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And I'll make one last caveat on this one with mine is that like at West Hills, for instance, I think we're diverse in a lot of ways. I'd love to see us be more diverse in other ways. And again, being in the place where we are, it's kind of like, well, you have no excuse. People can drive here from 20 minutes from every corner of St. Louis. But like for instance, I say second tier, and yet we had a couple seven years ago as I was coming in as a lead pastor that told me, "Hey, this is a good off ramp for us. We've been looking to be at a church that's more diverse." And that was their big thing. And my council to them is like, I can say second tier and as soon as somebody tries to leave our church for that reason, I was like, "Hey, look, why don't you stick around here and help us- Achieve that.
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Work toward that. And you can be a part of, let's get a team together of people who have that kind of a heart and think and pray and strategize. What do we need to do as a church?" And they left anyway. But yeah, so I'm somewhere between second and third for that. Yeah.
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Next is the church must be active injustice and social concern issues corporately.
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I'll say exact same answer for the last one. I feel like the diversity and social justice engagement to me is very similar in terms of what you ... If I'm constantly up there saying, "We got to do more, there's too many poor people in our community and we got to be more roll up our sleeves and you just have no desire to do that. And that's not the gospel and
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Whatever."
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The gospel's all spiritual and vice versa, if you're in the pews and you're like, "Why do we just sit around and talk about the Bible all the time and we don't get out and get off our butts and do anything?" And we're just at odds. I think over time, again, it's going to wear on one or both sides of that. And so yeah, to me, I kind of put it theologically third tier, but practically second tier, just in terms of the week in and week out, just kind of grinding effect of, I think we're not on the same page in terms of the vision we have for where the church should be moving.
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Yeah. I said two / three. I think I lean towards two if the wording of it seems like a big urgency for this person and practically I agree. It would just be grading for them to stay at a church that would disagree with that.
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I'm 98% a tier two depending on how you define active and justice and social concerns. We get
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Definitions.
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I'm just saying, is active meaning it's every week being mentioned for the pulpit, is active meaning there is some sort of regular rhythm of participation defining how you define social justice in that. I believe that the gospel demands we participate in the injustices we see around ... I think of how many times in like the minor prophets, God's condemnation on the rulers and kings for not caring for the poor and the needy and the widow and the broken, that there is a call that the gospel has a ... It changes our hearts towards our care for people and how it is that we view other image bearers. And so this one, I put tear to, again, depending on how you want to define terms, other people have different definitions for what they think that looks like.
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Well, I'm glad you added that. There is very much a biblical theological dimension to it, to your point, not just practical in this case. And you're right, there's a dimension, a level at which ... Yeah, if we're not on the same page about this, you might have a different understanding of the gospel and its implications than I do. And again, kind of like we said with some of the other ones like homosexuality and your view on that and things like that, it's like, yeah, we're probably different kinds of Christians if you are even a Christian at that point. And so go be at a less healthy church kind of thing. Yeah, that's good. Brian, I know I didn't highlight it, but there's a number of questions that we're skipping past in the master spreadsheet here about churches and political party affiliation, Christians can vote Republican, can vote Democrat, et cetera, et cetera.
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I don't
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Know- See two seasons ago about this.
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Yeah. We already did some of those, but I do wonder if ... The one that I threw out, I mean, y'all give your quick thoughts on that. Pastors should never talk about politics from the pulpit. Do you agree with me that that's a tier two, or is that tier three and the person should just, "You know what? I have a different conscience on this. I don't like it when my pastor talks about it, but I like the rest of his preaching. I like everything else at this church and we have relationships here now and we're not going to sell the farm just on that one." What do y'all think?
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Again, it feels more Christian maturity, Christian conscience, bound up than triage. I think pastors should talk about politics and address things and call balls and strikes when things are blatantly put out there. We do this even in a sense of, in our church, in the context, like in our pastoral prayers and how we do this, do I think it needs to be an every week thing? No. But again, it depends on specific context and time. Should a pastor talk about politics? Yes. Should a pastor help his congregation think theologically so they can think politically, yes. That's good. But again, the problem is in too many churches, the pastors are thinking politically and that's informing their congregations more than theologically. And that's where you see the skewing switching of it, which is where my issue lies.
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Yeah. I was going to say, I mean, even as much as I ... It's easy with any of these probably issues, you can fall off one side of the horse or the other. And for me, it's like, you're not allowed to talk about politics, it's falling off one side of the horse. Now the flip side is, yeah-
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You're only
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Talking
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About politics.
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We've got another church down the road here that shall remain nameless that, especially during COVID and stuff, every sermon turned into a political rant with a little Bible sprinkled in. And I would say very, yeah, very clearly for me, if I'm a congregant in that church, if I go more than about one week, I might give him one pass. Pastor just really didn't ... He got off base there and I'll send an email. But if I'm going more than about one week where it's 45 minutes of politics and zero minutes of the gospel, that's a massive problem or zero minutes of, or a couple minutes of the Bible just kind of
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Sprinkled.
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I'm not going to stick around a church like that for more ... I mean, if I was a visitor, I'm not coming back. If I've been there for a long time, again, maybe I sent an email or phone call, phone call, pick up the phone, lazy. And after that, yeah, if we're at odds on it, I'm not sticking around.
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Yeah. I was thinking about that church too. And I think distinction between thinking theologically to encourage people to think politically, it's a huge distinction. So I think it depends on the amount of ... This is a bit of a sliding scale of how much a church is speaking about it, how they're speaking about it. But I think practically, it's probably number two. You should probably find a church that you feel comfortable and not graded on every week when that comes up.
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That's good. 68. We haven't actually done 68. We've skipped about half of them. Oh, we've probably done 30 at this point. Let's keep going.
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Yeah, 68. It isn't necessary to believe in a historical Adam to be a Christian.
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And for my sake, and also the listeners, I Googled that. The historical Adam refers to the belief that Adam described in Genesis was a real historical individual, the literal first human created by God rather than merely a symbolic or a mythological figure. Where's that at? See 68. It feels important. Would it be worth leaving a church over if you have a different view though? I'm not entirely convinced that it is. I would lean towards three, but I think it has theological implications that are big and important as well. So I'd say three, that's my take.
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What say you?
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I put this in my special tier two that's hanging on a thread to tier one. I have not met. I could possibly meet someone who doesn't believe in historical Adam. Again, at that point, I'm really questioning, do you really believe the Bible? Do you believe it's true? Do you believe that God created everything? So like, I don't know, as I said, it's probably tier one now that I'm talking about it. I think there's too many downstream implications if you reject the historical Adam.
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That's fair. Well, I think about what Paul says in ... I should have pulled it up before this. It's Romans five, right? Where Paul says, "Just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sin for sin was indeed in the world before the law was given." Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who's a type of the one to come. I mean, he goes on, he just talks a lot about Adam.
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Yeah, too much if you-
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Sin coming in through Adam. I think that one in particular is probably the biggest New Testament text. I mean, you get other New Testament texts like 1st and 82 where you get the grounding of the complementarianism obviously in historical, I think, Adam and Eve and their relationship and the creation order and things like that. So there are a lot of things downstream for sure. And I think that's an interesting way to put it like you put it that is like, have I ever met or can I imagine someone who just believes that Genesis one through three were a parable, symbolic. It seems a little different than like say Jonah.
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Again, I think all of us, we're going to err on the side of a literal interpretation of taking scripture more, literally, more seriously, but even within that, there's like, well, whether or not you read Jonah as allegory versus not is a little different than Adam. So yeah, I probably, I mean, I would say certainly if you're talking about like your pastor subscribes, whether they subscribe to a different view on this historical Adam thing, that would be to ... If I'm thinking about just two different folks or someone within our church, I see your point too, Brian. I don't know. I feel like I would have to really hear and try and understand the symbolic interpretation and an argument. I would have to really seek to hear that person out and can ... I mean, do they still-
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Do they ascribe to original sin?
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Do they still believe in original sin? Do they still believe in the universality of sin for like Romans five, for all of sinned and Romans three, falling short of the glory of God, all those kinds of things, if they do in just for whatever reason, because they're really convinced of evolution and therefore they can't square it. And so yeah, I've come to understand it this way. I mean, to me then I could see tier three with you.
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Oh, no way. It's going to affect which church they're a part of. It would have to be a tier two. I mean, I think- As you're describing that, I don't think that person could attend just any church.
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I'm trying to put myself in their ... I mean, I- Or maybe those churches just don't exist, so they'd have to ...
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I'm just saying if that person personally was convinced of evolution and they couldn't square evolution with a historical Adam, and so therefore now I've bought into this symbolic, but I still nevertheless, I see it as a parable for all of us. We're all Adam because we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. And I still believe that I'm a sinner, not in deserving of relationship with God, and yet he sent Jesus a literal historical Jesus. I mean, that's a very different ... That might be later on the thing. If we're talking about historical, literal death and resurrection of Christ versus just symbolic, that to me is different. I think the sin thing, very important I definitely see the strings that you're talking about, the threads with a second tier and even a first tier kind of thing. But I think I can conceptualize of someone who holds to that belief and still could be at our church and just kind of understand I'm the outsider here.
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I still consider myself an evangelical Christian, but- They couldn't be a member. Most evangelical Christian. That's a considered statement of
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Faith. Correct. Again, that's what maybe I'm
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Having different categories. Couldn't be a member for it. Yes, couldn't be a member. But we already did that one. Whether or not you could be a member and be a non-member and stay at the church. And at our church, you can. It's not like we kick you out if you have been here for six months and not join the church. So again, and we may or may not tell that person, you should go to a church that doesn't interpret the Bible as literally as us. Again, in most of those cases, just pastorally, I err on the side of like, I'd rather you stay here and keep hearing good biblical orthodox preaching and maybe in time you come to see the importance of a historical Adam, if that makes sense. So yeah, I don't know. That's where I would fall on that one, I think.
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Cool. Next one. Women ... Are we on the women question here? Women should remain ... Starts with women, sorry. Women should remain silent during teaching.
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I think it's your turn. I think it's your turn. To go first.
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I'm going a pseudo tier three issue on this. I mean, this gets to, in some ways, part of the egalitarian complimentarian conversation, which I do think largely leans tier two. But again, with how it's phrased, if this was a ... You should hold to one of those positions. I'm pretty much a clear tier two, although I know there are people who put this in a tier three category and it's not as big a deal for them. For me, as a pastor at a church, it's a clear tier two. I could not go pastor a church that held to egalitarianism. As a pastor, yeah, for sure. Even if I wasn't a pastor, I would not go to a church that ... Same. Yeah.
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And this is where I would ... It's funny, today more than the previous two episodes, you and I have probably disagreed more, but in flipping it, it's not like one of us is more consistently a stickler and a teetotaler because on this one, I would actually put it more tier two because again, maybe somewhat theological, but again, for me, probably more practical than anything. I just think that, for instance, I know that we've got at least a couple folks at our church that are real conservative on the women publicly speaking during the assembled gathering kind of thing. And we're not there. We intentionally ... We're complimentarian and we believe that women shouldn't teach authoritatively in the context of the assembled gathering. And so women aren't pastors, they're not elders, they're not certainly not preaching, but because we want to reflect the diversity of giftedness and the fact that we're not trying to be overly dogmatic where we don't believe scripture is dogmatic and chauvinistic for that reason, we're trying to intentionally build in opportunities during, for instance, our opening worship set for women to lead our calls to confession and the assurance of pardon and read from scripture and things like that.
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But I know we have people at West Hills that get been out of shape about that. Some that purposely ... Anyway, we maybe don't need to go to that, but I would just say that that's a big enough thing that probably, again, over time, that's going to wear on you. I mean, I guess you might decide to just not come into the sanctuary until the singing is done and the women are off the stage and it's just the elder leading the pastoral prayer, a man, and then the elder me, are you preaching, man? And so-
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I mean, part of the reason I put it in that, I'm a tier two on this, but I have that category is I don't know how for ... Again, even people in our church who I would say they would hold to an egalitarian belief, I'm not sure how convictional it is. They at least like the idea of it, which puts it in the tier three category where they're not willing to leave the church. I think it's more important than that, but I have that category in mind.
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Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm going to go ... Tier two, where you said. I think I'm going to stick with a second.
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What about you? Yeah. I would just think about our church context. If there's such a firm conviction that women should have no speaking roles at all in the service and every week almost we have women leading confession and assurance. I think tier two would be best for you to find a church that's more aligned with that. Yeah, tier two.
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I agree. There were some other ones even leading up to that one about women teaching men outside of Sundays, women teaching men during Sunday school, on Sundays. And so anyway, those could be interesting.
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You also, with this question doesn't have a during teaching, what is teaching? What is teaching?
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Yeah.
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Like a Sunday class? Again, most people are going to put this in a tier two category, but even then I can think of people in our church where a woman has taught a co-ed class where someone who would say, "I disagree with this, but I'm willing to still attend the class." I might be a jerk in the class, but I'll still attend.
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Or I disagree.
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So I'm not going
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To enter the class.
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I'm going to
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Leave the church.
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I'm not going to offend my conscience by going to the class and going to that.
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Yeah. That category. Yeah, I agree. Cool. Drums and electric guitars have no place in church tier one.
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My turn to go first. I feel like this is kind of like that and the color of the carpet. It's a pretty easy, squarely tier three. Now, I say that and again, it is kind of one of those like, gosh, if you really just can't get over the idea of drums or guitarists being used in worship and like for you, the most worshipful kind of music is led by piano or organ or acapella. Or I mean, certainly if you believe there should be no singing and no music like a Church of Christ kind of thing.
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Just the salter.
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I mean, then it maybe becomes more tier two, I guess. And again, we live in a place where we're blessed with an abundance of churches that if this is really good ... But to me, yeah, I'm going to stick with a third tier. This is one of those where you don't ... Maybe it's a helpful thing for you to be reminded even during that drum solo every week that we don't do drum solo, but that like, you know what? I believe
(38:30):
In the church if we start drums. Cure one for you.
(38:33):
Nick Jagger, you can't always get what you want, and that's good for you as a Christian. It's good for you to not just always get your personal preferences. I mean, no one ... There are songs we sing, I don't love. There are songs we sing. Brian, you don't love that like Thad and I and others love. I don't have any of our songs. I'm
(38:55):
Still here. Get out of
(38:56):
Here. So anyway, yeah, I think it's a tier three. Anything y'all
(39:00):
... Well, it's a helpful perspective. Brian's putting
(39:04):
Tier
(39:04):
Two,
(39:05):
Obviously. I put tier two, question mark. Here's why I didn't read that as like a, "Man, here's just my preference. I just don't think that these things belong." I kind of read it as like, there's no place. I'm not saying that you thought that.
(39:18):
Have no place is strong language.
(39:21):
I'm just saying that it feels very strong. It feels like this person has very firm beliefs on it. And if you believe it's so firmly, you should probably go to a church that's more aligned, but it's a preference.
(39:32):
Or you should learn theological triage and you should
(39:35):
Make it a tier
(39:36):
Three. Learn what hills are worth dying on and you should learn that drums and guitar are not that hill.
(39:41):
It's not that hell. I think it should be a tier three though.
(39:44):
Tier three.
(39:45):
Yeah. Okay. A faithful sermon will be more than 30 minutes. I said tier three feels like length of sermon, you can have disagreements on that and still stay comfortably at the same church.
(40:04):
Or at least uncomfortably. Or at
(40:05):
Least uncomfortably.
(40:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
(40:10):
Yeah. I mean, I put this in a tier three. I think a pastor has to have a different category for this speaking into their philosophy of ministry, but for the average Christian, I think it's a tier three. I don't think length of sermon should be the dictating factor of the church you attend, although it will be a factor you at least consider. For a pastor, it is a more important conviction of the philosophy of ministry in that. And man, I know pastors who it's 25 minutes and I'm like, "You must be the best communicator in the world to do that. " And they rely on other things. I know other pastors who they're an hour, 15 minutes in their sermon and I'm like, I think that's probably personally on the too long of sides, but I think for the average Christian, this is a tier three.
(41:10):
I
(41:10):
Think the word that's tripping me up is faithful. I mean, if, for instance, I, as the preacher, was just really- Waxmanedquently. No, no, no, no, no. The other direction. If I believed that the best sermon is 25 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever, and you as a congregant in my church truly believed this, believed that a faithful sermon will be more than 30 minutes. I mean, that's not just like I believe ideally a sermon will be. It's kind of like what you said about the have no place with the drums. That's an absolute kind of statement. Faithful is like, it's not like the best sermon will be, "Well, my pastor preaches good sermons. They're just not the best. They're not ideal because they're not long enough." It's like, no, you're not being faithful. That to me now feels like, again, you're going to be at odds.
(42:12):
Now, in that scenario, I could go so far as to say that could be a second tier kind of like, you need to be at a church where you believe your pastor is preaching faithful sermons and being faithful to the Lord in his calling. Now, if I go the other direction though, where I have that conviction that the ideal and faithful sermons are more than 30 minutes and I like to preach for 45 minutes and you in the pews disagree with me and believe you don't have to go for more than 30 to be faithful. Heck, I think the best sermon is 20 to 25 minutes or whatever.
(43:03):
Then I go third tier because I would say, "Well, yeah, you might like for me to preach shorter and you get out sooner and whatever else." But maybe, again, it's like you've said that, a category of spiritual maturity and just we disagree on this, but you know what? Where else do you have to be? You can sit here an extra 15, 20 minutes and deal with it. And who knows? Maybe you'll just get ... The thing that God really needed to speak to you is in the second half of the sermon. So anyway, I think it depends on who believes this or which side of it you believe as to me whether or not it's second or third tier, if we're going to use the word faithful.
(43:57):
Do we have time maybe for one more end with this one or do you want to
(43:59):
Call it? Two more. Because that last one is- Two more is good. Yeah.
(44:04):
A pastor can preach from the message during the Sunday sermon. Message translation. Your turn, right?
(44:12):
Tier two, because I don't think and Eugene Peterson does not think that the message is the actual Bible, that it's a paraphrase. He himself, who wrote it, said it was a paraphrase.
(44:30):
And if a pastor is only using that versus very different to reference and to highlight it, say, "Hey, this is a helpful way to think about it. " Very different. To preach solely from the message during a Sunday sermon, it's a tier two. I would not attend that church. I think if you're talking about other Bible translations, I'm going most likely tier three, depending on or except for the KJV only where every other church who's preaching out of this is not actually preaching the Bible because if we switch from the English standard version to the Christian standard Bible, no problem. If we switch from that to one of the better translations of the NIV, no issue there. If we change to the legacy standard Bible, no issue's there.That's a tier three to me. But when you put a paraphrase and that's the soul dictating saying this is the authoritative word of God, that's a tier two for me.
(45:44):
I guess I got to go next. I like what you said and I think I agree. I think you convinced me. I think going into it ... See, first of all, I didn't know that ... I don't have tons and tons of experience. I know the message is kind of like ... It's kind of an inside joke thing with us.
(46:06):
I every once in a while in a commentary or another person's sermon and they'll pull in the translation. I'm like, "Oh, I like that paraphrase. I like that kind of way of rewording this. " And not to diminish what it already said, but just to really kind of put it in words that resonate with us today and the English language can be helpful, like you said. But yeah, to preach from it. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you. I think when I first read it, my instinct was more third tier, but I didn't ... Yeah, I guess I didn't even ... No, I think you're right. I think that would be, if that's a week in and week out kind of thing, especially, and this is like our default translation, so to speak, if you even want to call it that, of the Bible.
(47:08):
It's the Bible translation you hand out at the info bile.
(47:11):
Yeah, exactly. Is it even the Bible that we're giving them now versus what the author himself ... If you want to call him the author, again, this is like ... It gets really important, the words we use. Is using Peterson the author? Is he the translator, the reviser? What label do you want to give him for what he's given us or done to us if you want to in this book of the message. But yeah, would it be fair to say not totally dissimilar to the life group that uses the chosen for their Bible study, like watching the video series the chosen where it's
(47:54):
Like- I would rather them use the message- On Sundays than use
(47:59):
It. No, no.
(48:00):
In their life group, then watch the chosen. Well, yes, yes, yes.
(48:04):
No, I was thinking,
(48:05):
Would you rather
(48:06):
Message on Sundays or chosen Wednesday night life group?
(48:09):
Chosen Wednesday in my life. Which one is worse? And preach out of the Bible on Sundays. Yeah.
(48:16):
Yeah. And with that, let me just say for ... Because I know we have people in our church who love the message. I enjoy the message. I look at it often because in reading lots of Eugene Peterson's work and the biography about him, just he wrote that in order to help his own congregation who was struggling to understand the Psalms and the prophets. And he was a phenomenal Greek and Hebrew scholar. And so he's like, "Well, I can rework this in a way that's going to help them, but also help them go further in their spiritual maturity as they're thinking through these different categories." He himself did not preach from the message. Interesting.
(49:01):
So you read the biography on him? Cool. That's really helpful. Yeah. I think if it's referenced every once in a while, it feels like tier three, but I think it's a good distinction if it's solely preached from, that's worth leaving a church, tier two.
(49:14):
It's
(49:16):
Helpful distinction.
(49:16):
That's good. Last one.
(49:18):
You said one more? Okay. Christians must abstain from all forms of alcohol.
(49:22):
Tier three.
(49:26):
Must. The must is tripping me up.
(49:29):
Tier three. I think alcohol-
(49:31):
I don't know why. The must seem very strong, but it's definitely a preference. It feels like three.
(49:37):
To me, part of what we're starting to realize with a lot of these questions back and forth is there's the element of theological importance to the core doctrines of faith, but then there's another dimension of how public and corporate is this issue.
(49:59):
So to me, this is a ... Now, if you're talking about a church where, yeah, we don't have this conviction about alcohol and therefore we're like throwing ragers or just giving out alcohol at our ... It's part of the culture of the trivia night and like church-wide functions kind of thing, church-sponsored events or we use wine and communion and you have this strong of an issue of must abstaining and like now we're serving real wine and communion. Yeah, I could see there being scenarios, but to me, if it's like, you know what, I don't have this conviction, I drink alcohol, and yet I understand that others have this conviction and therefore it's a stumbling block issue, we're not going to use real wine on Sundays. We're not going to do church sponsored events where we're serving alcohol. So as long as we're respectful in that way, then to me, it's clearly a tier three.
(51:08):
Yeah, makes total sense. How corporate, how visible is this
(51:11):
Issue?
(51:12):
Yeah.
(51:12):
It's helpful. Yep.
(51:14):
And that's it. Yeah? Yeah.
(51:19):
Man, it might be a five-parter. We'll see. We might be able to wrap it all together next with a fourth part next week.
(51:28):
We'll see. But we'd love to do a fifth part if you would just submit more theological triage questions
(51:34):
For us. I'd love a whole season of theological
(51:37):
Triage.
(51:38):
Try and see if you can ... No, don't actually. Get us so sideways with each that we're flipping tables in here. No, yeah. Yeah. It's a great plug.
(51:51):
And you can submit more questions. Even if they're not about theological triage, we would love some questions. We love to answer your questions. Yes. If you care for your pastors, you can care well for us by submitting the questions so that we enjoy doing the podcast.
(52:05):
Well said. You can submit those at the info bar or at our website, www.westthillstl.org. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe, leave a review, share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening and look forward to having you join us next week.