Ask the Pastors S8 E8: “Theological Triage, pt.5: Heaven, Hell, Resurrection, Satan, 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 your host and one of the pastors. I'm joined by our lead pastor, Will.
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Yo.
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And Pastor Thad. Hey, hey. And this is part number five of our theological triage series. Number five. At this point, do we need to say what theological triage is? Yeah.
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Can you remind us real quick and 10 seconds or less?
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Theological triage, number one, two, and three, three levels of importance. First is salvation issues, believe this or not. And you may or may not be a Christian. Tier two, we're going to say you can still go ... You're still a Christian, but you might need to go to a different church. And tier three is tertiary, so least important. And you can totally stay at the same church. And anyway, we'll kind of delineate between two and three if you should stay at the same church or not, but
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One of the
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Three
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Levels. So yeah, triage in a nutshell is the ability to discern the relative importance of different topics. So that's what we're trying to help people think through and do. And we're going to try and finish it out. We had our spreadsheet of 150 different random topics that we narrowed down to, I don't know, what, like 60 or 70 and been taking, I don't know, a dozen or so per episode, but we're trying to finish out a big bulk of them here in less than an hour. So let's do it. All
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Right. Number 129. Congregationalism is the only allowable church polity.
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I'll go first. Second tier for mainly practical reasons. I don't know how we would certainly be members of the same church if we had fundamentally different views of the polity structure of the church. Makes sense. If I think we ought to be doing everything the bishop says and you think, no, the church all should be members and get a vote in who the pastor is and whatever. I just don't know how that would practically work.
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Tier two. Same.
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I agree with two.
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Cool. Easy.
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Next one. Repentance is essential for salvation. Not free grace.
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Somebody else has got to start.
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I'm going to go tier one. Mostly I think a basic understanding of what repentance is that to deny it, it's a gospel issue that if there's a denial of repentance, there's just error and understanding of what salvation is.
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So Acts 2:38, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. Essential for salvation. And you'll be saved. Yeah. Yeah. You can just go down the list of scriptures. I mean, it's right there in the gospel.
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Boom.
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First
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Two. Agreed. Tier one. Yep. Alrighty. We are Zooming. Record time. Christians must fast.
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All right, you're up.
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I said tier three. I said not required for salvation. People could and should absolutely stay at the same church if they disagreed with each other on this. Though scripture in Matthew six seems pretty clear Jesus is like when you fast. So it seems to be something that believers should do.
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Not if, but when and how. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Tier three. I mean, and to your point, like you said, I mean, the when in Matthew six, when you fast does make it seem like you could frame that as a command, in which case you could push that and say, "Well, okay, so if you don't then, if you've never fasted and you never have any intention to or whatever, are you disobeying Jesus command?" And then what kind of implications does that have for ... Thinking about him as really your Lord and you're following your discipleship of Christ. So you could maybe try and push it, but I think it's probably mostly in those cases, mostly a discipleship issue where somebody just doesn't really understand the words.
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You'll be a malnourished
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Christian
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If you do not fast.
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Yeah. From some things in some ways, for some place sometimes. Yeah. It's not the
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Same thing. It's not
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Always fear. Not just from food. And you're saying malnourished spiritually.
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Yeah. Not on this particular day of the week. Yeah. Anyway, so that's good.
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Okay. Let me find my spot. It's family worship. Christian families must have family worship regardless of frequency. Family worship is required. It's like it's framed as a true or false. I don't know. It's
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Challenging. Oh, is it me now? Part of how I would ... So I'm thinking back to last week's sermon, even in Deuteronomy 12 and 13 about worship and what worship is and how you define that. I mean, there is a sense in which all of life and all that we do is worship and just different ways and giving our assigning worth to different people and task and things in different amounts. But if I want to take the question at face value and think about family worship as we, under this household or whatever, we get together and have some kind of like liturgy or like kind of basic, I don't know, flow to our collective together worship that we do. Oh, sorry.
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To me, I kind of put it in only maybe more so, but in the same category as the fasting one, where I'd say you're going to be a malnourished, not only individual now, but family. If you neglect that, I think it's clear that God wants us to worship him, point one another to him, spend intentional time carved out for reading his word, talking to him, prayer. Maybe it's singing, maybe it's, I don't know, other disciplines that you do together corporately as a family, but doing these things together. But yeah, no, I'm in a tier three.
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Yep. I'm tier three. I kind of have a follow-up question. Maybe it's something we should do for another episode. I'm thinking of our church covenant and how it has in there. If that, because it would be in our church covenant, would necessitate potentially a tier two. I mean, I am a tier three and I think people should. And if I could just give one more word on family worship of what it does for families is it further emphasizes that salvation is not a ... It is personal, but it's never private. You're teaching your children that you can gather for worship as a collective family biologically, and then as a collective spiritual family, largely in the church, that it does not have to look like our Sunday morning service, but there should be some elements that are the same. Prayer, the word, maybe singing, that there are benefits to doing that and raising our children that, and again, malnourished it collectively if it's not part of your habit in some capacity.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, definitely. Tier three, but you're definitely missing out if you're not doing some sort of family worship. Yeah, Deuteronomy six talks about passing these commandments onto your children. There has to be some level of discipleship of your family, but yeah, tier three, you're missing out if you're not doing that.
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Well, and just to be fair and think about then you got empty nesters, you got folks that haven't had kids, or you have single people that how are you even thinking about family at that point? If I live by myself and I ... So certainly from that standpoint, obviously, again, you're just reading it at face value. I guess the question does say Christian families must have family worship.
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And you've emphasized this a lot, like even Jesus or God's commission and the garden to be fruitful and multiply has implications for us now as believers to not only physically reproduce, but also to spiritually reproduce and grow families. And so it can look like those not biologically of the same family joining for worship. Maybe it's in a life group, but an aspect of that. Going back and
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Rereading this one now, I think I'll say, I'll just throw the question out on a technicality because there's no such thing as a Christian family. There are only families with Christians in them. Christian makes a terrible adjective and a good noun. So like my family, can you call it a Christian family? If one of my kids is I hope maybe probably already a Christian and two definitely aren't. So half of us maybe are Christian. Anyway, even if all of you ... Yeah, there's no such thing as a Christian family, just Christians within families. That's maybe another topic. Same apply for
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A Christian nation.
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Oh yeah. Well, you could push that way bigger. Christian movies, Christian books, no such thing. All right.
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All right. Moving on. We must never support policies against Israel.
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Tier three.
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Yep.
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Three.
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Some people want to make it. Some people want to make it. Second tier. I'm not going to waste any
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More words.
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Probably ... Or four. Can I add a- I don't think we've lost anyone over this one yet, but we probably will. I don't know. Once we get to Revelation or something and I start actually, but that'll be a long time. My views on your- Maybe it's a good thing because we did the podcast on Israel and there are some people that I know in our church that if they listen to this or listen to that, they'd be gone already.
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Yeah. Should be something you could disagree with somebody honestly at the same church.
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I would like to think so.
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Yeah. Agreed. Jesus is eternally subordinate to the Father.
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Whose turn
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Is it? Okay. I said two / one. I think it's getting very close to tier one. Reading up on this, just me learning myself is really helpful. Kind of distinctions between economic or relational subordination and ontological subordination, relational like what God does. Jesus submits to the Father versus ontological being who God is. They're not all ... Basically it's like if someone is saying ontologically that each person is not equal in nature, I mean, that gets to a pretty big statement that gets close to one for me.
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Next. Yeah, I think I'm where you are. It's one of those, I can't remember the previous questions we've had where we kind of said it maybe feels like a little bit of a theological kind of technicality. Like one of those things that we could probably quiz 10 people at our church on and depending on how you- I could
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Name maybe five people at our church who
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Would know what. That you're confident that would not fail that quiz. But if we gave a multiple choice quiz with similar wording about Jesus being subordinate to the Father, co-equal with the Father, I don't know, like describing the power dynamic relationship between the Son and the Father. I just think that probably it's one of those things that a lot of Christians are, again, under discipled on and I don't think that their failing of that quiz is going to land them in hell. So it's a weird question to think through in terms of like leaving a church. I guess if you think about it in that way, you're thinking about like, no, you have actually thought through this and you've come to a different conclusion than me or the Bible.
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The church has put out a statement.
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Or the church has, this is what we're subscribing to. In that case, you're probably, again, like we've said, starting to talk about, think about some pretty deep roots in tier one in terms of the relationship between the persons of the Trinity and God's nature and character and who he is. And so yeah, it's a ... I don't know if I'd necessarily answer ... I just said I agreed with you. What would you- Two,
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Maybe one.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. I'm a one / three. I think if you ... In the sense of I-
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If you just don't even-
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If you don't even know- Yeah, sure. For that reason, I don't think this should be as big. It's not going to be something we teach on regularly. I don't think it's anything churches should teach on regularly in the sense of that. I'm unconvinced of, not to say you did a poor job. I don't think that was in perhaps the most accurate description of it. I think people could subscribe to EFS and be Christians and-
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What does EFS stand for?
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Eternal Functional Subordination of the Sun and how it is that they view that. I think it's going to really be for those who are theology nerds and going to seminary and stuff like that for, again, my own understanding of it. ESF is just another reason to do it. It could be a Trinity issue. I think it's really less of that and more people's own trying to understand God. Although I reject the eternal functional subordination of the Son for the record, but yeah, people who reject it typically would say, "This is a first tier." If you don't understand it, you aren't a Christian. And I think that's not charitable for those who don't even have the understanding of economical, the economy of the Trinity and how that all functions together. I didn't think
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It through in those terms until this afternoon.
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Yep. So I'm a first tier if you know what it is. I'm a third tier if you've never even heard of it before. That makes sense.
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Moving on. The Bible teaches double predestination.
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Is it me?
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I'm going to say ... I didn't look back at these before, so I'm just shooting from the hip on these for the record. I'm going to say third tier. I'm going to say that another one of those practically ... I'm going to mention it from the pulpit when it comes up in the text or when there's a compelling reason to remind people that God ordains people to hell and that no one is in hell by accident either, and that God's will is sovereign and everything happens according to the council of his eternal before the beginning of time will. So I think it's biblical. Again, I think it's one of those things that is, again, just a discipleship issue of how well do you understand scripture and how it all makes sense and fits together, but for those that for whatever reason don't, or just can't bring themselves to say that out loud or believe that out loud or whatever, I think for me, it's not like ... I think some people are so convinced of their whatever five point Calvinism and everything, that it becomes almost a hobby horse that they're going to find ways to kind of shoehorn it into sermons and things like that, almost to make their point or drive people away or something like that.
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And in a case like that, then yeah, it's probably going to be a second tier thing because if you're someone who really takes issue with it, but for me, I can probably think of only a couple times maybe that I've ever been pretty staunchly kind of dogmatic, I guess, about this point, maybe even from the pulpit in a way that would really drive someone who's not a double predestination kind of ... Again, that's what that means for ... God predestines people to both heaven and hell, not both at the same time, same person, but both camps of people are there by God's predetermined plan and will. So anyway, I'm going to say ... But I'm going to say third tier because ... Yeah.
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I'm going second tier because previously when we've talked about Calvinism or doctrines of grace, we put it second tier that ... I think it's related that if I ...
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Oh, it's definitely ... I guess for me, it's just because it's one of the subcategories and it's the one that people have the hardest time with that ... Anyway, that I can understand that ... And again, I'm thinking practically, like we have, I know people at our church who would ... Understanding the doctrine would say they reject it. And again, I would say, "Well, I think you haven't really fully thought through your theology and the implications here and that's okay. I love you. I wish you would think through it. We can talk about it, whatever, but it's not going to cause me to lose sleep that you don't agree with me on this yet." It maybe should cause you to lose sleep until you can really wrestle and get to the bottom. And maybe you'll end up ultimately thinking it all the way through and buying the other arguments and believing so strongly in that, that for them it would be an issue.
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And maybe that's where, yeah,
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I don't know. That's where I'm at. I think if someone was to do that, that's a natural response of either staying or leaving. I've either been convinced now or I'm even more adamant that it's wrong and-
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Yeah, I can see your point. Yeah. Another one of those, if you've really thought it through and you're convinced biblically and biologic or whatever, that God cannot, would not, does not preordain that people would just skip over Romans nine and that God does not predestine people for hell and then your pastor gets up and-
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Says that
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From Robert's not. Says that. Yeah. Yeah. Then you're going to have a big issue. I mean, that would seem like a pretty major thing. You're right, that your pastor is ... I mean, I don't know heresy is a strong word, but if I believe that God doesn't do that and you're saying, no, God decided before you were born that you're going to hell, then that's a big deal.
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Yeah. Tier two in that. Yeah, makes sense. Tier three. The book of Jonah is a parody or historical satire. You taught through Jonah?
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I saw through Jonah. What do you think? I'm going to put this in a
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Tier two, tier two. I think, again, maybe I'm thinking too much as a pastor in that, but I think because it does, not in the same way of, like we've talked about the virgin birth and other things, or how we think about scripture and its authority, it trickles downstream from that, that there's certain threads you could pull hard enough to that. I'm a tier two on it. I think I would leave a church if perhaps ... I probably wouldn't be at a church where the pastor held it in that way, but I can also- Yeah, that would be a different thing. That's a different thing if you're pastor held to it versus just a congregant. I think in that sense, there's some that could fall into tier three, but for me personally, I'm holding it more a tier two, but I can get behind someone who might put in a three category.
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Yeah. I think the pastor believing that and you disagreeing would be a reason to leave a church. Tier two, if it's a congregant, I think those are two helpful categories. We might have to be answering both categories if we're doing that for each question. I think practically, probably two.
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I think my follow-up question is why do you believe that the book of Jonah is a parody or historical satire? Yeah. And if the answer is because come on, a guy gets swallowed by a fish, then that would start to have implications for your reading of it of scripture in other ways. And do you really take God's word at face value and seriously and literally in that way, inerrancy, all that. But I think if it's like, well, no, the style and whatever, I think it reads more like satire or a fable or something like that, then to me that would be clearly tier three, that we've just come to different conclusions about what the purpose- You don't understand the genre of the book. Yeah. We all say that we're trying to read scripture the way God intended it to be read. You don't read a Psalm the same way you read a narrative, you don't read that the same way you read Song of Solomon or go down the list.
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And so if you don't view it just because of the genre you're placing it in as history, then I think that's ... Yeah. So that's why I lean toward a third tier with that, but I think it depends on your reason.
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That makes sense. All right. A belief in a literal heaven and hell is not necessary to be a Christian. I guess practically, what is the other option? Is it a metaphorical heaven and a metaphorical hell? And where would people get that from?
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It's unpleasant to believe in a literal hell in heaven.
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Yeah. It seems to be vitally important to believe that it's real. I don't know. I just think about the thief on the cross from Jesus is like, "You'll be with me today in paradise." But now that I'm talking about that, it's like, man, that thief could have thought, yeah, sure. Maybe he didn't fully believe that that would be a literal, but he might have. But would he have not been saved if he thought it was a, "That's great. I'm going to be in a better place." Would he not have been saved if he thought that? I'm not sure. So I think I'm backpedaling on my tier one, but heaven and hell seems so important that it feels like whenever it's mentioned, it's like, this is a heaven or hell issue,
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Tier
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One.
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Literally. Yeah, literally.
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But I don't know, but you too.
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Yeah. I
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Feel like it's mentioned so much in a church or in a biblical church that would definitely be a reason to leave a church if that's being shared from the pulpit and you disagree, I guess.
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Yeah. I mean, can you-
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Unsaved if you don't believe that.
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It's hard for me. Again, you've heard me throughout, if you've listened to the other four and a half podcasts now on this triage stuff, I try and bend over backwards to see the case for how someone could think that or believe that. And I try to be charitable, give the benefit of the doubt, but can you be saved from something or to something without really believing or understanding what it is that you're being saved from or saved to? That to me is kind of the question. And yeah, like to your point, Brian, if you only believe in some sort of hell in heaven or somehow used symbolically or something in scripture of something else that's not heaven in hell, I don't know. It's very difficult. I'll just say it's very difficult for me to put this anywhere other than tier one. I don't know how you really make sense of the gospel without a literal heaven and hell.
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Yeah, that's pretty tier one for me.
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Yeah. I'm tier one. I think part of your reasoning is mine of what are you saved from and what are you saved to? And maybe it's the, if it was phrased, you are saved ... I'm trying to think, a belief in a literal relationship with Jesus or not having a relationship with Jesus to be a Christian. That changes it. Which again, if you're going to reframe the heaven and hell, because I think there's so much misunderstanding already about both in particular that it makes it a little bit more fuzzy. But I put as your one. I think you do. Again, as you grow as a Christian, it's going to expand more in one's understanding and depth and implications of it. But I don't think that the thief on the cross in Jesus saying to him like, "Today you'll be with me in paradise." I think that is at a simplest form, a belief in the gospel results in a presence somewhere else.
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And so yeah.
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Cool. Move now. Another hell question here. "Unbelievers suffering in hell will not be eternal, but for ... " Oh, okay. Let me just start over. "Unbelievers suffering in hell will not be eternal, but for a definite time and then be extinguished."
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Yeah, I think there's an apostrophe that they miss there, Brian, so that I'll blame the spreadsheet, not you. It's possessive,
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Yes.
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Yeah. Got it. They're suffering. The unbeliever suffering won't be eternal. But for a definite time, and then be extinguished. Annihilationism is kind of the name for this doctrine that maybe there is a literal hell and maybe there is real suffering there, but not forever because that would make God just a monster or something. And then eventually they'll pay off their sin and their suffering will be done. I think that this really, again, for me, starts to undermine the Bible's clear doctrine of sin and just how egregious it is and its doctrine of God and just how holy he is.
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So again, I'm trying to really imagine a congregant at our church, for instance, who just is not yet discipled and mature enough spiritually to grasp that, to grasp just how Holy God is and just how sinful they are. I mean, maybe they have grasped that God is holy enough and they are sinful enough that they need a Savior Jesus. But then the second day that they, the day after they got saved, they're introduced to this doctrine, let's say, and they're just shocked and horrified that, wait a minute, but hell is forever. And so you're saying my mom who died, that she's there forever. And they're just appalled by that. And I can't believe that.
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So I mean, at a very least, I would have to say it's at a very least a second tier kind of thing where if they stay in that place and they really cannot, after being presented with biblical evidence for what hell really is and how it really works and how bad sin really is and all of that, and they still just can't bring themselves to believe that, then at the very least I would say, yeah, we're talking about we believe pretty different things and we're not going to be at the same church, but it's another one of those that maybe less so than believing in hell and heaven at all, but having that wrong of a view of hell is like at a very minimum, yeah, it could be close to a tier one issue for sure.
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Yeah. Yeah. If we put it in the tier one adjacent in the tier two category, that someone ... I think it's natural for Christians to wrestle through their understanding of hell and even heaven of what that is. And some of it's a growing maturity of faith. But I do think you pull too much there and you really lose the gospel and understanding accurately all that it is. And also, like you mentioned, Will, just the clear teaching of scripture. So I'm kind of there like if I can ... It's a sticker and it's overlapping into the ... It's a bridge between the one and two is kind of where I'm at.
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Yeah. Same. Agreed. Next one, resurrection of Christ was not in a literal bodily form.
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Appropriate question for- Easter waste here? Easter week, holy week. I'm putting this in a tier one for several reasons. One, I think to deny the bodily resurrection undermines salvation. If Jesus didn't literally and physically rise from the dead, then he did not overcome sin. He did not free us from sin. Death has not been defeated. It denies the gospel accounts of, look at my hands and look at my side. Would you touch them, Thomas? It undermines as you furthered out of what happens to us after we pass. And so I think there's just so many implications of disconnection that to deny Jesus, physical, literal, resurrection, bodily resurrection just undermines the gospel that you don't understand it. And I don't know what kind of gospel hope you have and what God's going to do. Again, it comes back to the heaven, like the idea of, well, are we just floating spirits or are we embodied souls kind of thing.
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Yeah. Yeah, definitely tier one, clearly appeared bodily, clearly had wounds, clearly appeared to hundreds of people proving that he did rise bodily. If you have a, excuse me, wrong understanding of that. Yeah. Is he the son of God then? Did he actually conquer sin? I mean, there's just too many implications of him not raising bodily, literally. So yeah, tier one.
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Agreed. Yeah. And Paul says in one Corinthians 15, "If Christ is not raised from the dead, you're still stuck in your sins." And again, I guess if I'm trying to think of this person who would believe this, they would say, "Oh no, no. Well, of course I believe Christ is raised from the dead." Just not bodily. Spiritually, he came back. But I just, yeah, to y'all's point, I think that the only reason to believe that in opposition to everything that scripture teaches, like y'all said in the gospel accounts about it being a bodily physical resurrection would be that you just think that that's fantastic, fanciful. And at that point then, yeah- Isn't the whole story of it? That's what I'm saying. At that point then it's like, well, okay, so I guess you're only going to believe in stuff that you deem believable. So what are we even doing here?
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I mean, what kind of God do you believe in? Who can't raise people from the dead?
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As well, if I'm trying to think of where someone is going to go with this to try, of Jesus appearing in the locked room with the disciples, they're going to look at that and be like, "Well, how is that even possible?" But again, then you're going to doubt the rest of the story of scripture that it paints and-
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Passing through a wall.
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Yeah. Right. Yeah. Just-
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It's a different body. Different kind of
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Body. I agree, but if I'm trying to think where someone is going to proof text it, next.
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Yeah. I was speaking to somebody the other day who's a non-believer who said, "No, Jesus didn't raise bodily." And it was like, "Okay, well, that is a huge disconnect and if you believe that, you're worse to be pitied." Yeah, of course not. Not saved, so praying for him. All right. Satan is not a personal being. What we define a personal being as singular, as one actual person, individual. Is that what we're defining personal being as?
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I think so.
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Seems that if you think that Satan is just an evil force, like a dark cloud that's just wandering around the earth, it seems like you're not reading scripture closely. Seems to be that Jesus refers to Satan as an individual, having a personal accounts of personal language of who he is. I have some scriptures written down. I don't have them pulled up. Like Luke 10:18 in Matthew four, verse 10, couldn't read them right off the bat. So I'm leaning towards tier one. Why would scripture talk about him as an individual using he fell from heaven, he's a fallen angel, and if he's just a dark cloud of spiritual force and I don't know, you think about the serpent in the garden, what was the serpent in the garden if not an individual having a conversation with Adam and Eve. It just has implications. And then, I don't know, I haven't closely studied intensely Revelation, but I have some commentaries and I'm going to dive in for young adult ministry this week, but not- Very young, young adults are doing Revelation.
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Not the apocalyptic, but John's letters. Anyway, but just seems like it has implications for the end of times as well as he's thrown into the lake of fire. It's like, okay, well, is there just a big cloud of darkness that's thrown into the lake or is it an individual? I don't know. It just kind of pulls on a lot of gospel threads, tier one.
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I agree with a lot of your assessment and yet I think I'm going to say tier two on this one. I mean, again, I think you're going to have some trouble really rightly reading and understanding a lot of various aspects of the Bible and how it all fits together, maybe. But I mean, I can conceptualize of someone believing that when the Bible talks about Satan, it's kind of a placeholder for evil in general or something like that. Or like you said, this force, this, I don't know, pervading, I don't know, brokenness of the world, something that again, just wouldn't seem to mesh well with pretty much everything of what we hear about Satan in scripture and yet I don't know that to me that would be enough to keep them out of heaven. That's
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A fair point. Is it essential for salvation probably? Tier two with that.
(00:41:50):
I'm going to go tier two with an assumption that this person does believe in sin and evil and understanding. They believe in the personal work of Jesus Christ. It's not an explicit, like very different when we were talking like the repent question, repentance is necessary
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For
(00:42:16):
Salvation. Albeit, I think you're going to have a real imperfect and really struggling theology if you don't believe in the personal being of Satan. You're going to have to do some interesting hermeneutical jumping through hoops with the Garden of Eden, with Job, with Jesus temptation and the wilderness. That's going to make it really difficult, but if I'm trying to do my best to place it in levels of importance, I think because it's not explicit in any of like, you must believe this, I put it tier two for that. I think it's probably greatly going to affect a church if we're thinking about leaving and going to a church. And again, whether it's coming from the pulpit or other people, you're going to have a real hard time even answering the problem of evil and human sin and suffering, but I think you could be a Christian, albeit very imperfect theological opinions.
(00:43:32):
Yeah. I'm persuaded by both of your thoughts with that. If this person still has a right view of evil and sin and ...
(00:43:41):
Yeah, they're not denying sin. They're not denying that there's evil. It's more a wrestling with a personal beating say in.
(00:43:51):
Yes. Yeah, tier two.
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And some of it's just even just hardships of understanding spiritual warfare and how it occurs even now
(00:44:01):
In the church. Next one. Believer can be truly saved and then lose your salvation.
(00:44:09):
To me, I'm going to say tier two. I think that that's a big enough theological issue and goes straight at the heart of your understanding of salvation and what it is and how it works and all that, that if you were to believe that, I would say, yeah, we probably believe different enough things that this merits different churches. But again, I think there are Christians that believe that, that are Christians, that are going to get to heaven and discover that they lost a lot of sleep and worried a lot when they didn't need to because God keeps those he calls and he does not undo, he doesn't revoke the spirit, doesn't unseal, sealed, secured, saved people. So anyway,
(00:45:18):
I'm putting it a tier two as well for all those reasons and ...
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Yep. Yeah.
(00:45:25):
It makes a lot of sense. I read salvation and I was like, salvation issue, tier one. But the idea of people being at the same church, they can both absolutely still be Christians and one just loses a lot of sleep. I agree with tier two. Christians should never receive secular psychological counseling.
(00:45:54):
Tier three, I think it's a wisdom, pastoral care, counsel kind of thing. Personal conscience. Yep. Tier three.
(00:46:06):
Yeah. Tier three, people can absolutely be at the same church if they disagree on that.
(00:46:11):
Agreed.
(00:46:13):
Christians are sinning if they take antidepressants or other forms of psychological medication. I said tier three with this one as well. I think you should be able to disagree over medication use and still be at the same church.
(00:46:30):
Yeah. Tier three, same thing. It would be hard for ... I mean, short of Christian scientists or something like that, I don't certainly don't know of any churches that like have an official church statement or stance on this. Oh,
(00:46:46):
I'm sure they're out there.
(00:46:48):
I'm sure they're out there. I am sure they're out there. And I'm sure, again, without it, short of it being an official position, paper, whatever, that there are pastors that say things from pulpits in one direction or the other on this, that, again, people feel strongly enough or whatever that they're going to leave in both directions, that a pastor would say, "Maybe you need to go get some help and some medication." And then somebody is so opposed to the very idea or vice versa that probably- They're on medication, the pastor. Yeah, the pastor would say something about real Christians don't whatever use medication in this way for mental illness. But again, so many of these were, as we've identified, it's one thing for two lay congregants to disagree over something. It's another thing for a pastor and certainly a teaching kind of person in a teaching role to speak in any sort of authoritative way about such things.
(00:47:58):
But yeah, all that to say, tier three for me on this.
(00:48:02):
Tier three, wisdom, conscious, pastoral care, medical ethics, all those kind of things. No, nevermind. I'll stop. I won't say too much.
(00:48:12):
You're excited.
(00:48:12):
No, no, I won't.
(00:48:14):
It's another podcast topic to go deeper on this issue of whether or not Christian should- When we're
(00:48:20):
Talking about Satan, I recently heard someone talk about how the Karate Kid is the greatest telling of the gospel story in movie form.
(00:48:30):
Outside of, yeah,
(00:48:32):
Outside the Bible. So at some point, not on this podcast. I'll just do sure where that came from. I'll do an Instagram live with our question. No, I was going to say, I could get to ... There could come a point where someone taking other forms of psychological medication where I think an argument could potentially be made for sin, but that's way outside the scope of this question. Is that one?
(00:49:03):
Sure. All right. Last two. Second to last one. A multi-site church model is allowable and healthy. I
(00:49:11):
Guess we could just combine these last two, right? Cure one. Because the second one is the other. The second one's the other side of the argument. A church must never- Very
(00:49:19):
Related.
(00:49:20):
Must never adopt a multi ... Oh, service. That's why. They're really relevant. So you got multi-site and then you got multi-service. All right, we'll keep them separate. Multi-site church is the idea. It kind of campuses, you start, you grow, you outgrow, you need more space. What do we do? Well, we could plant a church. We could- Whose is this? ... get a bigger building. We could-
(00:49:44):
Your question.
(00:49:45):
What do you mean? I
(00:49:45):
Think it's him.
(00:49:46):
Okay. It's me. Yeah. I'm just giving context or explaining. So multi-site would be, no, no, no. We're going to keep ... It's all West Hills, but this will be West Hills West and then we'll have West Hills East and we'll just buy another building and some people will meet there. And usually with campuses, and maybe some of even how we answer the question might get into the details of, well, do you have just a different campus pastor that just preaches or do you have a different ... Are you piping video in? Because those are pretty different, very different things and understanding of church and how you're practicing. All of it to say, for me, multi-site church model allowable and healthy, that would be a second tier thing.
(00:50:32):
Obviously, for instance, I don't think we would. I think that we wouldn't. Big announcement coming. Yeah. And we would not end up being a multi-site church at any point down the road, I don't think. But if we did, and someone thought that that was not allowable or healthy biblically for churches, then I think that would be a big enough reason for them to leave, to be like, "I fundamentally disagree with what our church is now and how we are practicing and doing church. And I can't support this church so long as we are choosing to practice church in this way that I believe is not allowable or healthy." And I guess the ... Yeah. Now, the interesting thing, maybe more, it would be the opposite is if, for instance, the leaders of the church did not believe that multi-site church was allowable and healthy and a layperson did.
(00:51:43):
In that case, I don't think there would be a need for someone ... Like if our church grew and we decided because we weren't on board with multi-site campus stuff, we were going to go buy a bigger building or we were going to plant a church instead or whatever. I mean, I guess I could imagine someone having such a big issue that they'd say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, why aren't you just doing a campus?" And they feel so strongly about that, that they would then leave our church over that. I mean, all of this, of course, is assuming that there's the need there, you know what I mean? For instance- You're not
(00:52:23):
A tiny church and then you're going to do a
(00:52:24):
Bunch of other things. If you're a tiny church with a big enough sanctuary that you don't need to even be having the conversation, then again, to me in that regard, it's a very third tier issue because why are you even getting so worked up about this that you're arguing with other people at your church about it? Are you just looking for a reason to leave? But I'm assuming that this is an actual issue, an actual pressing issue for you as a church, in which case to me, I would say in the one direction it would be second tier if you believe philosophically that what your church is doing is not biblical, not good and right, practice, expression of church. But in the other direction, it would probably in that case be third tier where you'd just be sitting there like, "Why aren't y'all just ... It's not hard.
(00:53:12):
Just open a campus, but we don't believe in campuses, so we're not going to do that, but are you really going to get bent out of shape enough that you'd leave?" So I'd say it's in the strongest case scenario, it's a second case, second tier.
(00:53:28):
Yeah. The word I really struggle with and points to why I put it in a tier two is healthy. Healthy. And again, there's so many different- Kind of takes
(00:53:37):
It a little deeper, doesn't it?
(00:53:38):
It does. And there's different models and iterations of this, but I put it in the tier two category. I think if I would actively not choose a church probably because of that, I would find another church. And again, there's a lot of nuance and different stuff, but tier two.
(00:54:09):
Yeah.
(00:54:09):
I don't know. Maybe I'm just being too charitable for the people that would think this. Maybe they would be able to submit to the church's plan or inkling to plant or to have a multi-site church model if they strongly disagree. Practically, implications, if that rubs you the wrong way, you should probably find a new church because it'll be something that you think about all the time, I guess. But I'd like to think it's a tier three issue, but it's a large, I think, will, to your point of like, this is who the church is, this is what we do, this is what we're doing.That's a big deal. It's not just like, this is a program. It's like, this is what we're going to do.
(00:54:50):
It's going to affect leadership. Definitely. How you- How you
(00:54:55):
Shepherd,
(00:54:55):
How you care for people, govern and make decisions and all kind of pooling resources, I mean, all kinds of things.
(00:55:03):
Yeah. All right. Our last one, a church must never ... A last one from this list. A church must never adopt a multi-service church model.
(00:55:16):
Who is it?
(00:55:17):
It's me.
(00:55:17):
Tier
(00:55:18):
One. No. So with this one, I more so put it in a tier three versus a tier two because I think they are a multi-site versus a multi-service. I have distinguishing categories for those. For those who would make the strongest argument against a multi-site would also make the strongest arguments against a multi-servicing. It's two separate churches meeting in the same building space. I would disagree with that. So I put this one in a tier three.
(00:55:53):
Yeah. Same. Tier three. Yeah.
(00:55:57):
I mean, the word must is making me trip up on this one and think that I'd say if you really feel that strongly, then we're probably talking tier two. Again, if we are assuming that we're in a scenario where this is even a relevant question for us, again, if our sanctuary's got a thousand seats and we're a church of a hundred people and we're just looking for things to argue about, and what if dreaming one day we got big enough or the church down the road that we're looking at and we just need somebody to feel better than, and we say they got multiple services and we're arguing over that, then I'd say, yeah, but again, I'm thinking about in a scenario where like West Hills, like we went through ... When was it right before COVID? 2019. Yeah. January of 2020. It was when we launched our second service and then two months later was COVID.
(00:57:00):
If in that scenario, I think that someone taking that strong of an issue, a church must never adopt a multi-service model. Again, like I said with the other point, I think it's just so much a part of the day in, week in, week out experience of the church. I mean, yeah, to your point, the people that ... I don't, of course, buy that argument, but I mean, the people that do, they're going to, I think, just be so tripped up by the way that we think about the church and practice and our expression of church, that over time, I think that's going to be really grading on them that I would say maybe it's better for you to be at a church where you don't feel like we as a church are violating your conscience about this and how church should be practiced. So yeah.
(00:58:08):
So you're the same
(00:58:09):
As the last one. I'm
(00:58:09):
Going to say tier two on this. Yeah. I think that especially that word must. I mean, because to me, it's even more strongly stated than the other, which was allowable and healthy. This is must never adopt. So I think if that's really your position, and I don't believe that, then when it becomes a relevant question, it's an
(00:58:34):
Active
(00:58:35):
Conversation. And if it becomes an active issue, then I think, man, yeah, we're ... Now again, to your point, Brian, I can imagine, and maybe not even just imagine, but I mean-
(00:58:50):
I can think of people who would at least prefer-
(00:58:54):
Suspect. Yeah. I have some folks at West Hills that I suspect that this was a little bit of an issue, but anyway, yeah, that would prefer ... I mean, shoot, I would prefer and ... No, I wouldn't. I take that back. I like the multi-service for many reasons, mostly practical. The kids' ministry was the main ... Having people come up at 10 o'clock to watch the kids and not even get to sit through the worship service and be in and worship, I think is crazy. So I think some of those churches then, I don't know, you got to at least have a nursery. I don't know. We don't have to go through it, but I just ... Yeah, I think you're right. I think we have probably some people that would prefer, and even on in their mind, maybe some theological kind of grounds, understandings of what the church is and should be that, but I don't know that they would say must never because we've done it and they're still here.
(00:59:55):
So anyway, I'll leave it at that. These are good questions and It's been fun. This whole series continue to, I don't know, my last word would be another just invitation to folks if you've watched, listen, if you've enjoyed thinking through it for yourself and if we've been helpful, if there are other issues, spinoff issues or either things that we touched on as triage issues and how important they are, but we didn't actually stake a position on that you'd like to hear, follow up with that, or to continue the triage thing in a follow-up series later on other, I don't know, issues that people argue about in churches and how important should it be to us. And we could make another list of another dozen or more- Got a few, right? Yeah.
(01:00:46):
Someone submitted.
(01:00:47):
Yeah. Potentially some spinoff follow-up later episodes to come, but it's been fun. Yeah. Hope it's been beneficial to folks.
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This is us signing off from the podcast.
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Well, it's good to wrap this one up before Easter and then we'll launch something new and fun after Easter getting the new stuff.
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Rebrand it. Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors, please remember to submit those questions for our podcast by visiting The Info Bar at West Hills or by submitting them online through our website at www.westhillstl.org. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe, review, share it with a friend. We look forward to seeing you at Good Friday and our extravaganza and one or all of our Easter services.
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I'll
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Be at all three.
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Busy weekend.
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Sunday.
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Hope
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To see all of you at all three. It's 9:30 at 11. See you next week or this weekend and or this weekend. See you.