Dale Partridge - November 25, 2020


Real Christianity #121： Does In-Person Church Really Matter？


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

163.19145

Word count

2,721

Sentence count

172

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Pastor Dale Partridge answers a question from Jeff in Oregon about the importance of physical gathering in the church and why it s important to have it in person. The church has become a place to go and consume instead of a place for people to join and contribute to the body of Christ.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, where each week
00:00:13.120 I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral. This is a 100%
00:00:20.120 listener-supported audio ministry of relearn.org. And for those who don't know, our mission
00:00:26.400 at relearn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical, confessional,
00:00:32.640 and missional. For more information, just visit relearn.org forward slash house.
00:00:40.900 Okay, is it critical for Christians to gather in person? This is going to be the topic of
00:00:47.460 discussion. But before we begin, I just wanted to make one quick announcement. Guys, husbands,
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00:01:41.020 All right, today's question is from Jeff in Oregon.
00:01:43.660 That's where we're from here in Oregon, and he asks, Pastor Dale, the church is entering
00:01:50.060 what looks like a very tumultuous time.
00:01:53.000 Many states and most of Canada are prohibiting the gathering of churches, and it's causing many
00:01:58.220 small churches like mine here in Eugene, Oregon, to either meet online or in minimal numbers that
00:02:04.300 cannot sustain the financial demands of the church and staff. I understand that COVID is a real virus
00:02:10.540 and that we need to be considerate of others. Do you have any advice on how Christians can
00:02:15.180 be thinking about physical gathering during this difficult season? Okay, great question, Jeff.
00:02:22.200 i'm going to answer this question quickly today and in short order so i'm not going to spend a
00:02:29.620 lot of time on this but i'll start with with this everyone needs to be very patient with their
00:02:36.580 pastors as they face this specific discussion lots of pastors are faced with this specific
00:02:44.020 question that you have here jeff and they have people on many sides yelling at them on one side
00:02:49.140 They have the progressives in the church who live more by politics and fear than by scripture,
00:02:54.300 and they want a complete shutdown of the church, and they see no issue with the internet gathering
00:02:59.780 model for the church. On the other side, you have the patriot Christians who are more American than
00:03:06.300 they are followers of Jesus and are concerned more about their freedom than they are with the
00:03:11.660 gathering of the church. We, however, are biblical Christians who look to the authority of scripture
00:03:17.220 to determine how we're to think, act, and speak, and we have to be more concerned about these
00:03:23.240 prohibitions and limits on the physical gathering for one reason and one reason only. God cares
00:03:31.140 about the physical gathering of the church, and we're going to discuss this more in a moment.
00:03:36.120 So that's my first point. Second point is, I believe that we dug our own grave here in America.
00:03:41.460 For the past 50 years or so, the church has become a place to go and consume instead of a people to join and contribute.
00:03:51.600 What I mean by that is America has made church centrally a place for inactive spectators to sit and listen to information.
00:04:03.060 And that's what church really is, right?
00:04:05.940 A weekly conference center where information is passed along.
00:04:09.760 Why do you need to go gather in person on Sunday anyways, if that's the case, right?
00:04:14.820 Can't you get the same information from a live stream or an audio recording?
00:04:18.460 In other words, if church is simply a weekly event, you know, presenting content, which
00:04:25.900 is just recorded later for consumption, why should I make it a priority to fight for the
00:04:30.980 physical gathering of the church now?
00:04:32.860 And what's the value of people being present on Sunday if they can do the exact same thing
00:04:38.700 at home, which is listen to a handful of worship songs and a sermon and not get other people
00:04:43.700 sick? These are good questions that poke some pretty major holes in the modern expression
00:04:50.260 of church. But these questions stem from both an incorrect definition and an incorrect experience
00:04:58.060 of biblical church. Biblical church, in my opinion, is far more than a sermon and worship
00:05:04.980 songs. I actually did an entire episode on this topic titled, Can Watching an Online Sermon
00:05:11.880 Be Considered Church? That's episode 90 if you want to take a listen. But biblical church is the
00:05:17.800 physical communing and fellowshipping of those who have been redeemed by Christ. It's the central
00:05:25.520 local place of weekly edification, which is far more than information. Too many pastors
00:05:32.200 have taught that edification is solely accomplished by preaching. It's not.
00:05:38.800 Okay, preaching is critical and maybe even primary, but it is not the solitary form of edification of
00:05:44.520 the saints. Christians are edified by a variety of things that go beyond preaching, from just
00:05:50.700 having a listening ear of a pastor, to the prayers of their fellow saints, to the laying on of hands
00:05:57.820 in a moment of sickness, to the joy and laughter of close brothers and sisters in Christ, to the
00:06:04.300 correction from a more mature believer, and to the confession and repentance of a fellow child
00:06:11.900 of God. These are all ways of edification, and they're critical. And this is why there's over
00:06:18.880 100 one another's in scripture. Christianity is a family. Family is dependent on connection.
00:06:28.860 Connection is dependent on presence. But sadly, this has not been the case for Western Christianity.
00:06:35.580 We don't fight for presence because we're not connected. And we're not connected because we
00:06:40.520 don't believe we're a family. And this is a fundamental flaw in modern Christianity or 0.69
00:06:45.220 churchianity, and we must realign ourselves to Scripture. We must remember that attendance 0.86
00:06:51.200 really is a form of ministry. Church is not only for you to receive, but also for others to receive
00:06:57.640 from you. I think about Hebrews 10, 24 through 25. It says, let us consider. It's a command. Let us
00:07:03.900 consider. This is a main clause. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
00:07:11.940 not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the
00:07:20.420 more as you see the day capital d there the day the day of his return drawing near so all that
00:07:26.080 to say we are still faced with a dilemma how can we both gather as a family while also respecting
00:07:33.280 the health risks of those who are vulnerable in our communities during this time so here's my
00:07:37.760 thought. The internet is not a valid option. Yesterday, I tweeted, in the same way that you
00:07:44.800 can't raise a child or do marriage over the internet, you can't do church online. The internet
00:07:52.380 was a bridge to the real thing. It's not the real thing itself, end quote. Now, these are blanket
00:08:00.140 statements. It doesn't mean that the internet can't function for somebody who might be on hospice
00:08:05.240 care, right? It's the best that you can have. Or if you do have asthma, extreme asthma, you shouldn't
00:08:12.480 be out because of the risks. These are, again, our blanket statements. They're general statements,
00:08:17.680 not talking about the exception to the rule. But in other words, what I'm saying in the general
00:08:23.420 sense is that online church is not a valid alternative for biblical church. Okay, you can
00:08:29.120 do a lot of things on the internet, but you cannot do long-term family relationships online. In fact,
00:08:36.520 many of you will feel this tomorrow as you try to live stream your Thanksgiving dinner with some of
00:08:40.520 your family members. And I want you to remember how empty that feels. And then think about doing
00:08:44.840 that weekly with the church. It just doesn't work. People need physical connection. The rising stats
00:08:52.040 of depression, loneliness, anxiety, anger, suicide during the pandemic are definitely evidence of
00:08:57.440 that truth. The church is both universal as a body and local as a body. And I can't think of a more
00:09:04.740 connected metaphor for the church than what's used in scripture. We're a body, right? Try living
00:09:10.200 without your arm and your waist and your thumb and your left leg. You can't do it. They are
00:09:14.880 connected. And so here's my suggestion, and it's a bit of a doozy. So just hold on to your seats
00:09:21.020 for a second because it's not going to be easy, but it's what we do here. Decentralize the church.
00:09:28.800 That's my thought. Maybe temporarily, maybe completely and forever, but decentralize the
00:09:37.240 church. Kill off audience Christianity. Break one large church of, say, 100 families into 10 house 0.99
00:09:43.220 churches with 10 families each. And think of it like a big ship versus 10 lifeboats, right?
00:09:48.840 But don't, however, create this mini magisterium, multi-site church model where the pastor acts as the pope and preaches a message and everybody that gathers in houses watches it over a TV and sings some assigned worship songs and answers a few pre-written questions.
00:10:08.240 That is not church.
00:10:09.440 That's an organized Bible study at best. 0.90
00:10:12.080 In other words, just don't recreate audience Christianity inside of a house. 0.97
00:10:16.740 what I'm talking about is find 10 biblically qualified men to pastor 10 churches, 10 little 0.78
00:10:24.100 local churches. And if you can't find 10 qualified men in your church of 100 families,
00:10:28.500 you just need to leave your church because they're not doing a great job discipling men to become
00:10:32.500 leaders. And if you can find those men and you do have mature men in your church, let those men
00:10:39.580 put together little biblical missional communities, little churches, and let those men preach. Let
00:10:47.560 them shepherd. Get the families to pray together and take communion with one another. Operate under
00:10:52.100 the biblical gender roles and structure for the church. Let them choose their own worship songs. 0.71
00:10:58.160 Let them carry out church discipline and counseling and care. You know, when they grow, let them
00:11:03.820 multiply into other congregations. And this keeps churches small and deeply connected. And when
00:11:11.460 people are connected, they're more considerate. And what I mean by that is that they don't come
00:11:16.960 to church when they're sick. They wash their hands to keep people safe. They treat one another like
00:11:22.940 a family because they are. Family culture thinking is a result of intimacy, right? It's difficult to
00:11:32.100 think like a family member in a crowd of 400, but it's different when you think of yourself.
00:11:39.620 And this is why people show up to concerts sick, but they won't show up to, you know,
00:11:45.300 your grandma's house sick. There's just a different way of thinking that way.
00:11:51.220 Now, I know this is a tall order, but that's really what we do here in our ministry. We plant
00:11:55.860 biblical house churches. I know that it's not going to be the easiest thing for people to
00:12:01.880 consider. But I think a lot of people are actually considering this. A lot of pastors are thinking
00:12:06.060 about this as well. And that's, again, what we do here. We train average mature, but average mature
00:12:14.480 Christian men to do this. This isn't people that are ultra gifted and, you know, have spent their 1.00
00:12:22.000 whole life in the pulpit or, you know, hyper spiritual. These are just people that are godly
00:12:26.920 men who are mature in the church, and there should be many of them in a healthy church.
00:12:35.540 And I believe this is needed. We need to raise up these men to lead out more house churches. And I
00:12:42.200 truly believe that biblical Christians, whether they want it or not, could be gathering in homes
00:12:47.400 in the next five to ten years. So, you know, if you're interested in doing this or, you know,
00:12:53.740 encouraging your church to do this, or you would like to personally plant and pastor
00:12:59.640 a house church, we have a school. Now, the school used to be called St. Justin's. We just recently
00:13:06.500 changed the name to Reformation Seminary, and you can actually look up and see more information
00:13:13.140 about what we do at reformationseminary.com. So I'm going to leave you guys just with two
00:13:19.200 resources. Now, I know this isn't the most comprehensive answer to this question. I know
00:13:25.640 a lot of you guys are wondering about, well, what principle should we be considering? Is it wrong
00:13:29.640 if we're gathering with our church with, you know, 400 people? Is there, are we disobeying in Romans
00:13:35.880 13? How should we be thinking about all these matters? You know, who's right? Who's wrong?
00:13:41.740 Again, I'm going to leave that up to your discernment and your conscience. There's not
00:13:46.180 something in scripture that's going to speak specifically to those matters. It's going to be
00:13:49.500 a lot of biblical principles. But I do think that a biblical house church really is a good solution
00:13:57.300 because it meets in the middle. You don't have, you know, no church where you're just doing online
00:14:03.240 church, no physical gathering. But you don't also have maybe, you know, four or five hundred people
00:14:08.240 gathering together also. So it's a nice option that sits in the middle where you have, you know,
00:14:13.540 a handful of families. And I believe that really it's, to my experience, the most fruitful expression
00:14:19.500 of church. It's a wonderful experience to have a biblical community that feels like family.
00:14:26.620 And I really do believe it mimics the New Testament church more accurately and the
00:14:32.960 relationships and the intimacy and the closeness and connection that you see between Jesus and his
00:14:37.400 disciples more closely when you operate in this structure. So again, I'm going to leave you guys
00:14:43.960 with a couple of resources that will offer further understanding on this topic. And you can find them
00:14:49.960 on the post page of this episode. This episode is number 121 titled, Does In-Person Church Really
00:14:56.460 Matter? And again, that is a absolute yes. There's actually a good article that was written 0.51
00:15:02.000 on Desiring God by a gentleman titled, The Church Irreplaceable, Why God's People Must
00:15:09.740 Gather. It's coming at it from a different angle. I thought it was a pretty good article,
00:15:13.420 some similar points that I make here in this episode. And then there's a video that I did.
00:15:19.020 It's on our YouTube channel. It's titled, What is Biblical House Church? It's a short two-minute
00:15:23.300 video that might give you some more insight to what we're talking about. On that note, guys,
00:15:29.380 if you guys are a regular listener, we'd love for you to leave a review. Just tap the stars in the
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00:15:42.680 You guys can also follow us on social media. You can find ReLearn on Instagram and Twitter
00:15:48.380 and Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter at Dale Partridge. On that note, it's time to
00:15:54.320 close out. Hopefully you guys have a great Thanksgiving. My name is Dale Partridge.
00:15:57.800 I'll see you next week.
00:15:59.380 thank you for listening to this episode of real christianity if you're a regular listener to this
00:16:06.500 show would you prayerfully consider making a donation to support our ministry efforts
00:16:10.300 simply visit relearn.org forward slash donate again that's relearn.org forward slash donate
00:16:17.020 and for those looking to explore the idea of joining or planting a church in your home
00:16:21.160 you can download our free pdf ebook titled the basics of biblical house church by visiting
00:16:26.300 relearn.org forward slash house. Lastly, do you have a theological question you would like
00:16:31.540 answered on the show? Submit your question at relearn.org forward slash question. Thanks for
00:16:37.060 joining us on this episode of Real Christianity. We will see you next Wednesday.