What People Ask When Picking a Church
But he said, the traditional way to distinguish churches in the 90s and the
2000s. What is your view on predestination?
What's your view on baptism? So predestination, what's your view on baptism?
What's your view on the end times? That's a big one. What's your view on the
end times? Right. And then what's your view on spiritual gifts?
Modern way to distinguish churches, church between churches,
these questions. What is your view on the role of women?
I'm presuming in ministry. industry what's your view on social justice big topic
there what's your view on spiritual abuse,
what's your response to lgbtq plus scenarios yeah welcome to the uncut podcast.
I'm pastor luke i'm pastor cameron and this is the uncut podcast where we have
honest uncut But I forgot my intro.
Honest Uncut and Conversations about Faith, Life, and Ministry.
There we go. I felt like there was a third thing there. But I don't know.
So it's one of those things that you do over and over again,
and you eventually actually forget it.
If someone asks you for, I don't know, your social or your pin or something like that.
I have messed up the Lord's Prayer while praying, like during,
like praying in front of the congregation.
Like, okay, let's all pray the Lord's Prayer together. Like I messed it up.
It's like kind of like the singer who screws up the national anthem in front
of a big crowd, you know? Oh, can you see?
Oh, can you see? Bye.
Jose.
Well, anyways, Cameron, we're sitting down to...
Yeah, I recorded this episode, and you ran across a kind of a question.
Is it related with the podcast that he's associated with? I'm not sure.
I guess we'll see in upcoming episodes.
Maybe we can plug their podcast. Yeah, let's do that.
I had started listening to a podcast from a couple of guys who,
a couple of Asian Americans, who talk a lot about issues.
Issues they're all pastors talk a lot about issues face facing the asian american church,
and that's obviously not our culture and we don't really have a strong asian
american culture here in western new york where we live and so it's a really
interesting listen to me although.
Um you know there's a lot of familiarity just based
on ministry cultural differences within asian
american churches and kind of more like i guess what
we would be considered as like blue collar white american
churches um uh they're
they're really interesting anyway these guys are really insightful i really
appreciate the type of things that they talk about they're bringing a lot of
interesting guests i would love to know how they get their guests to come on
their podcast if they got to pay to do that or what um but um it's called off
the pulpit and uh we'll we'll we'll link it here.
And Thomas, one of the hosts, is a guy that I did a cohort with,
an executive pastor cohort with
a couple years ago now. It must have been five, six years ago by. Wow.
And anyway. Did you just time travel, Cameron? A little bit.
And I'm pretty sure, I know I'm not the executive pastor anymore.
I don't think he's executive pastor anymore either.
But anyway, he asked this question on his personal Facebook Facebook page or
not because this question, but he, he, it was a kind of more of a statement
about the traditional ways in which churches are distinguished across the.
Um eras yeah or
time periods so like if you were to ask the
question well what was the church known for the 50s
the 60s what was the church for known for in the
70s it's kind of it's like own little era the 70s
uh what was the church known for 80s 90s 2000s all that so um here is i don't
know if this is his opinion or if he was just asking for insight but he said
the traditional way to to distinguish churches in the 90s and the 2000s.
So how would you know the difference between?
Like if you're church shopping and you're like, these are the key questions
I need to know about this church to decide whether or not I'm going to fit here.
Yeah, maybe it would be like the questions that you would want to interview
the pastor or the leadership about.
Right, right. Or you're scouring their website to try and figure out what do
they think about this, this, and this. Yes.
Yeah. Those things maybe change over time.
Right. Yeah. Yeah, and so the idea here is, okay, well, what would have been
those questions that you would have wanted answered in like the 90s and the
2000s, the early 2000s? And there'd be questions like this.
What is your view on predestination?
So it's like, am I predestined to be saved? Or I don't even know that predestined
just totally encapsulates like soteriology, like the theology of salvation.
Or are you Calvinist or Arminian? Sure. Are you double predestination? Right.
What's your view on baptism? So predestination. What's your view on baptism?
What's your view on the end times? That's a big one. Yeah. What's your view
on the end times? Right. And then what's your view on spiritual gifts?
Well, so as time goes on, and now we're in like the 2010s to 2020s.
Yep. Where we kind of are now.
Modern way to distinguish churches, church between churches,
these questions. What is your view on the role of women?
I'm presuming in ministry what's your view on social justice big topic there,
what's your view on spiritual abuse what's your
response to lgbtq plus scenarios yeah yeah so first that was i thought it was
an interesting question i think it's very interesting too And so I wanted to
talk a little bit about that.
And I think one, I think let's talk about one.
Is the list accurate according to time periods?
Would you add or subtract anything to either of those lists?
I have some things that I think I would like to talk about around this,
like adding things to them. Yeah.
And then maybe responding to like, maybe we could try and ask the question.
Maybe we can kind of forecast what
the distinguishing questions people are going to be asking in the next.
In the next two decades? Yeah. Yeah.
So let's start with what do we think about the lists?
I think, you know, like, it's pretty hard to, I'm trying to kind of,
like, wrap my mind around, because, like, you only ever know your sphere, right? So...
I'm assuming that that list makes a lot of sense in the broad evangelical kind
of bleeding into Baptist, Protestant,
not mainline denomination world.
Do you think that those lists are as... Do you think that...
Because I've never really been in denominationalism very much,
particularly back then.
Do you feel like those lists change if you're in maybe a different sector of the church group?
Do you feel like that accurately describes the questions that people were asking
in some of the mainline denominations?
Yes and no. Because I think that one of the benefits of denominationalism is
that there's not a whole lot of question about what the actual stated theology is. is.
You're like, well, this is Presbyterian or this is Anglican.
It is written in, you know, according to whatever your guiding documents are.
I came out of Methodism, right? The Methodist Church.
It was the Book of Discipline, which just had everything. Right.
And you could go to the Book of Discipline and you could get a definitive answer
on what the church, church, the Methodist church, the United Methodist church, believed on paper.
Yes, on paper, which is not always the same. No, about that subject and that
subject and that subject.
And not every subject is covered, right? Because some of these things we would
consider secondary theological issues.
In fact, I think a lot of them are kind of secondary theological issues.
But if they're the questions that people are asking, then are they really secondary?
I don't know. But what I would say is that the benefit of denominationalism
is that generally you know what the denomination believes.
Now, whether or not the individual church or the individual pastor or leadership
team upholds those theological beliefs is a completely different can of worms
that essentially is one of the major things that kind of just split the United Methodist Church.
Right well yeah like that's the thing is like
as we're talking about this i'm like well like there
have been like over the last like decade there
have been significant you know splits shifts changes in the mainline denominations
over some of those issues yeah 100 well and you could you could take any of
those four things from the 90s and 2000s to 2000s 2020s.
And you could say you were a person who was coming here interviewing the pastors
to see what they thought on these issues.
Imagine them sitting down with us in my office, and I have a Methodist background,
educated at Wesleyan undergrad, Wesleyan seminary.
You came from Moody. Which is dispensational, yet kind of Calvinist,
yet conservative, like just kind of all over the place.
But not necessarily, you're not necessarily like a born and bred Calvinist.
Or born and bread dispensationalist definitely not so
um in a
non-denominational church such as ours which we serve you
could sit down and you could have the wesleyan perspective
on baptism but you could have a baptist perspective
on the role of women or you could have a progressive
view right on lgb lgbdq plus
scenarios or you could have a very conservative view on
them and all of those those things kind of
like right mix and match into this theological
and methodological stew that you find
in an individual church yeah and it's
not it doesn't align itself with
one particular theological tradition um so
to answer the question non-denominationalism makes
it really confusing because you don't know what you're getting right and
then you've got a so you as an individual person have
to like you have to come up with your own
book of discipline as it were or
standard of what what am i going to accept and
what are the major categories that i want to know that my church aligns with
and what and what am i willing to disagree with yeah and still be there we talked
a lot about that on this podcast just about like primary secondary tertiary
theological beliefs and and what breaks unity.
And what doesn't, and what's going to make me go to another church,
and what's not, and what can I live with, and what can I not. And...
You know, sometimes, I mean, like, to be perfectly honest with you,
sometimes I don't know what I believe about these issues or my thoughts change.
Yeah. Yeah. Over time. Mm-hmm. My thoughts have drifted on baptism. Mm-hmm.
Primarily, like, who I'll baptize and who I won't. Yeah.
In particular, their age. Mm-hmm. Um, my thoughts on baptism have changed in regards to like, um,
and they're still changing and I still am unsure, but like, what is the role
of catechesis in baptism?
In baptism? Yeah.
Both pre and post? Yep.
And so, yeah, so it's not even like as simple as being like,
well, what do you believe on baptism?
Okay, that's what you're always going to believe on baptism.
Yeah, I'm coming here. Yeah. Yep. You know.
So I think that like that 90s list, like, yeah, I think it was definitely a...
Because what was it? It was view on spiritual gifts.
Predestination. Predestination. Baptism. Baptism. End times.
End times. And spiritual gifts. End times was a big one there for a long time.
It was huge. Because of like.
Left behind. Yeah, left behind. Are you Jerry B. Jenkins?
Like, are you going to, like, is Nikolai Karpathia going to take over the world?
Wow, you read him, didn't you? Oh my gosh, I went to his college.
No, I read the teen version, Cameron. I read the teen version.
My mom read the adult version, but Jerry Jenkins is heavily involved in the upper leadership.
We had a building named after him. I did not know this. At our college,
yeah. I didn't know that.
Yeah. So he was like, was, is on the board? I don't know. I guess that makes
sense now, Moody being in dispensational school.
Yeah. so he's you know it was all the
students joked uh that it was moody publishing's worst
decision to not publish his books because they weren't published through moody
they were published through somebody else i mean financial decision yeah yeah
for sure but he's you know supported the institution a lot and stuff like that
anyways i don't really know that much about jenkins but um i know more than
the average person maybe but um Um,
I'm going down a rabbit trail.
Are you embarrassed now for revealing how much you know about the Left Behind series?
A little bit. I mean, I, I mean, I watched those. I watched that first,
um, that first Left Behind movie with, um.
I hope Kurt Cameron's not watching the podcast today.
He's going to be real disappointed in our opinion.
I couldn't make it through the Nicolas Cage one though.
I like got like 10 minutes into it. I had to turn it off and which is unusual for me.
I'll watch just about any nicholas cage movie um but what
were we talking oh yeah just like not dispensationalism but like
end times like yes is it all millennial is it post post millennial pre-millennial
pre-trib post-trib oh my gosh um and that was a big one um people were really like Like, still.
Yeah. People will still get... Oh, they get fired up about that.
Fired up. Like, you are not a Christian if you don't believe in the rapture. Right.
I don't believe...
I am not a rapture apologist. I don't believe in the rapture. Really?
No, I don't. Not in the classic left-behind sense.
Like when you say rapture, what do people think?
Oh, they think like. You're going to walk into the room and there's going to
be clothes there. Like somehow God just took me naked.
Like he's like, nope, you don't need that Patagonia fleece in heaven.
I'm taking you naked, boy. I have stories about that.
And I know that there are like youth groups in the 90s who pulled pranks on
people of like setting out a bunch of clothes and convincing people that they missed the rapture.
And like as far as that type of rapture is concerned, no, I don't believe in it.
I don't believe that it's firmly established in scripture.
I don't believe that it was a firmly established theology or belief in the history of the church.
Church um do i believe
that we will be all caught up into the air with christ
yes but that's not like what does
that mean right that that means yeah when
when jesus comes back we're gonna be with him yeah right like
um not that
somehow i'm gonna disappear from the earth and there's
gonna be a bunch of people walking around like cars will
crash planes will crash and you know everyone's going
to be like what happened yeah you know i wonder like
no don't buy it don't get it yeah i
don't know i actually i've i've because like it's like
one of those topics that was it was always last on the
syllabus in all of my which is surprising because
i went to a dispensational school but um like all
that end time stuff was always like the last thing you talked about in theology
class and so if the professor was like running short on time it was the part
that always always got skipped over because that should tell you something yeah
i think i i mean like i don't mean to be like snippy or facetious about it but
like that should tell you something yeah.
No, it's, I just, I don't, I think the, do you believe in the rapture?
I don't know. Do we need to talk about this? I actually don't know,
Cameron. I'm like, I don't know.
I kind of like, I was, cause I was in the evangelical free church of America
and they were a like pre-trib, I think they were like a, like strong, like pre-trib or was it?
Which if you're listening and you're not exactly sure what we mean,
like that the rapture will happened pre or before
yeah the tribulation yeah and she's
also a i won't comment sorry
go ahead no and and i was kind of like i was like i don't know about that because
i was in the denomination and i was seeking i was kind of like should i seek
ordination through the denomination because that was the denomination i was
uh serving under at the time and the denomination had like a vote couple years ago now,
and they had a vote and they decided to change the language of the belief statement
from pre-trib return to glorious return.
Christ will have a glorious return.
And essentially, they just say, like, you need to believe...
So says the Bible. So says the Bible.
Agreed. You need to believe that Jesus is coming back, and that's the requirement
for participation in the denomination. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I can do that.
And so that's kind of just where I've always... I've kind of been.
I'm just like, I don't know. I...
And it's never been the theological topic I've really been all that interested
in, and so I don't actually know what I really think about that. I think I'm not the...
We are just building future podcast topics. We are right now.
I don't think I'm – what was the – what's the one where you think we're in the
millennial now and we're just building – Isn't that amillennialism?
Amillennialism. I don't think I'm amillennial. I can say that with some certainty. Yeah.
Partly because that theology has been tied to some bad sociological movement
spurred by Christians in the past.
This kind of belief that all progress is good progress because we're in the
millennial and we're building a church and we must continue to,
I don't know, it kind of bled into imperialism and things like that.
So i just generally don't like that one but
um but anyways
there was this other there was this other topic um i
was going to ask you if you felt like it needed to be added um and you would
be a better person to ask than me because i was because you're because you're
older than me um what but i can't for what's the what's the theological term
for the debate over whether or not god can change change his mind?
Do you remember? It's on the tip of my tongue.
I don't remember off the top. Immutability? The immutability of God,
the changeability of God. Changeability.
Immutability, that's what it is. Was that like, I was told by different people
that at different points that's been like a big dividing issue.
Was that, does that make that list to you?
No. No? Not in my experience, no. Yeah. I mean, it was a topic of conversation
for us dorks at theology school, but it wasn't like a, it wasn't a distinguishing
question that I saw in the church.
Yeah. Yeah. Are you a Molinist, Cameron? I'm not.
We're going to set some people down really weird rabbit holes if they start
Googling Molinism. Yeah.
No, like, it is a good question.
I have some thoughts on the immutability of God, the changeability of God.
I was just reading in my personal reading,
reading back through the Old Testament right now, and was just reading yesterday
or so about Abraham's conversation with God in regards to the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah. Yeah.
He has kind of the same conversation with Moses. Yeah, because God's gonna like...
God's like, I'm destroying everything.
Yeah, he's gonna kill all the Israelites after having just saved them. Yes. Say bye-bye.
Say bye-bye. And with the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah too.
And abram's like yeah but does does
that really is that really in line with your holiness yeah
well they go back and forth they do they like god
keeps how about a thousand how about a hundred how about 50 how about 10 how
about one yeah and every time it's like god's like okay maybe that's not exactly
the tone sure sure um but the reality there is is that it seems as though god here Here would be my...
Way to talk about that is not that god is fickle um but that god allows himself,
to be moved so to speak
by his children yeah like it's not that like god doesn't know he's like heaven
and haunt up in heaven like doesn't know what the best thing is right it's that
he like a child is moved like a like a parent is moved by the request of their
child god is moved by by the request of those he loves and cares for.
This is one of the reasons that we believe in, like that God hears our prayers
and listens and answers, right?
Is not because he's unwilling to do something, right?
And we cajole him into doing it, but because he loves us.
You know, if you as a father, you know, like if your child is hungry, do you give him a stone?
You know no you give them bread why because you love them and they have asked you know um.
So no i don't remember that being a
distinguishing mark in the church i what i was going to say in terms of that
first list is if i had to add something it's maybe not so much a theological
topic as it is a methodological topic but i would talk about like the that the
the rise and the the pervasiveness of the church growth movement.
I was thinking...
Worship style. Certainly. Maybe a separate post or a separate...
Thomas, if you end up listening to this, a separate post, a separate topic of
conversation would be not so much... Because these are all pretty much theological.
Well, no, they're not theological. Maybe they are. I don't know.
The second list is not so much theological, I don't think, as the first in my
mind, but but you probably push me on that and I would change my mind.
But there certainly is ministry methodology and ministry philosophy things that
distinguish churches in those two eras as well.
And I was going to say the church growth movement, I feel like is one of them. Worship is one of them.
Which those two are closely linked.
Yes. The nature of evangelism or the method of evangelism, I think is one of them.
But, yeah, I'm talking about the rise of the Bill Hybels by the 90s and 2000s.
That was already kind of firmly established in the Rick Warrens. Yeah.
And not even so much the personalities, but the methodologies.
Do we do a Sunday school? Do we do a small group?
Do we? We're seeker-sensitive. We're purpose-driven.
We're moving away from small community church to- We're orange. We're sticky. Right.
Right. Right. Moving away from small community churches to big mega churches
as the desire of every church and every pastor.
Church growth. If we're not growing, we're not being faithful.
If we're not growing, we're not being fruitful.
If we're not growing, if we're not big, we're not making a difference for the
kingdom or for the people or the community or whatever.
I see, the reason I talk about that in that time period is because I feel like
we're seeing less of that.
I feel like people are arguing about it less.
What do you mean? Like some of, like, we saw that post the other week, you and I did.
Somebody was talking about, like, church size and was giving some,
like, apologetics for, like, big mega churches.
And some of the criticism the interlocutor that the post was engaging with was
we felt like kind of outdated like a couple like a decade or two behind the
question it was kind of like well,
ax was a mega church was a mega church like you know more people means more
gospel like all those questions i was like those aren't questions i think most
people are asking most people are asking the questions that are on that second
list or would i would addend to that second list of of saying, well,
doesn't large churches create places for spiritual abuse,
unhealthy leadership, et cetera, et cetera?
Or in response to our podcast, I think from last week, does large megachurch
provide the best place for discipleship? Yeah.
So I feel like...
The conversation is happening less around like the, or at least there's a turn towards,
maybe this is what the next era turns towards and becomes a distinguishing mark
is like, there's a turn towards a more organic.
Smaller, intimate, intentional model rather than a build it big,
build it better, get more people into the same room.
And become a big place. Now, I am not an anti-mega church guy. Yeah. I'm not.
I think that they,
I think it was Tim Keller that was talking about The gospel community.
The gospel community, the ecosystem of the gospel.
That was in that podcast. They mentioned it in the podcast that we listened
to the other week. Say, where did I hear that?
Yeah, but this idea that a community needs all different types of churches,
big churches, small churches, monasteries, non-profits, house churches,
and all of those serve to meet all the different people in their different parts of their faith journey.
I do think, though, like the trend, unless the trend changes,
this has been the trend for the last several years, and I think is speeding
up. I think COVID sped it up.
The trend has been smaller churches are disappearing and megachurches are getting bigger.
So that's been the trend so far, at least, in recent times, is that it seems
to be that we're consolidating. Centralized.
Centralized. This is my kind of negative.
I'll be a little negative. I think this could be, I hope that this is wrong, but I could see...
The rise of what we could call as like branded churches rather more than denominational focused churches.
So like we're a, like this kind of already exists with churches that are like Hillsong.
Whereas Hillsong functions more as a brand than it does a denomination.
And the rise of churches like that. So big successful churches who create something
that's closer and I'm being a little pejorative.
So like um um by
calling it a brand and not like a church group or something like
that um but then you kind
of consolidate like do you it's kind of like do you go to wagmans or
tops kind of become something more along those
lines um and then you know
there will be the there will always be the people who
are like no like die hard small local church um
but those will become less and less as the bigger churches and
as less people go to church in general because we're just
seeing a sharp decline in church attendance and seeing
an uptick in the amount of people who go to mega churches what is the what is
the definition or the the difference between a branded church and a denominational
church i don't really know other than i that's why i'm saying that maybe i'm
being a little pejorative unfairly here um because because i was trying to think
i I think Hillsong is a great example,
but I was trying to think of another example. Right.
Bethel's kind of there. They do have, they're not as well, there's not as many,
but you can have a church underneath Bethel.
There's Acts 29. Are they still a thing? They are still a thing, I think.
They've kind of, I mean, I've kind of stepped out of that, paying attention
to that community a lot. Is it the Harvest Association?
I think. from out of chicago do they did
they dissolve i don't they may have dissolved after um
james mcdonald's ugly exit um so i don't know could be or they're all like vertical
churches or something like that yeah that's what they were the church network
or the vertical church network so i don't know if that's like these associations
or networks of churches yeah i'm calling Home denominations were networks.
Right. ARC, Associated Related Churches. Yeah.
Harbor Network. Uh-huh. Converge Network. Yep. Those are all networks of churches.
There's like another one that's like a new thing.
New Thing Network? I think that was a thing. SBC. Yeah.
Well, yeah. What are they? It is an interesting question because they do have
belief statements that they ask all their leaders and churches to adhere to.
There is generally a leadership structure.
And there's less. I think there's usually less.
Um but there's there's there's usually
at least a top-down structure i think
the thing that's kind of lacking in some of those is that
there's not always a bottom-up structure so
in a lot of denominations there's room or the ability for um people to kind
of exercise authority upwards and affect the the denomination um positively
through accountability from the lower ranks whereas i I think if you're a Hillsong church,
I don't think you're able to say make Hillsong over in Australia change policy or do something.
You're kind of agreeing to operate underneath their LLC and all that stuff.
And so in that way, I think that's maybe one of the biggest differences that
I would maybe say is that there's less mutuality in the way that it's led,
and it's a little bit more more top-down rather than top-down and bottom-up.
Maybe.
Okay. What about the second list?
I think that's pretty accurate.
Because it was, what, women in ministry, social justice. The role of women.
Role of women. Social justice, spiritual abuse, LGBTQ+.
Yeah. No, I think we don't see a ton in our area of our view on social justice necessarily.
It's not a question that I think we get asked very often, if at all.
But I know it's a big one in other areas, other regions and things like that.
I think I want more on the topic or more about like.
What that exactly is. Yeah, like if someone were to ask me, what's your view
on social justice, I would want to know, what do you mean by social justice?
Right. Like, what do you think of when you think of social justice?
What are you actually asking?
Yeah. You know, do I believe that God is a God of justice and that the church
can be on the forefront of pursuing justice for disenfranchised,
ostracized,
marginalized people? Yeah.
100%. Yeah. Right. 100%.
How is that pursued by a church, I think is the question for me.
Do we pursue it through what I would loosely call gospel-centric,
gospel-oriented endeavors, programs, whatever?
Or are we saying, no, it's important for social justice reasons,
reasons for churches to engage in and enter into the current political system
in order to gain traction on what we believe are social justice issues.
That for me would be the more pressing question, but I would want to know too
what that meant. Like what that meant.
What do you mean by social justice? Also, what do you mean by the role of women? Right.
Are you talking more broadly to, like, are we talking about the role of women,
like, in marriage, like, complementarian versus egalitarian? Mm-hmm.
So, or are we talking about just in ministry inside of the, like,
the organizational part of the church?
Do they get to be elders, pastors, et cetera? Yep.
Yep. But would you add anything to that list, that second list?
I don't think I would. No, I don't think I would, but I would agree with your
previous statement that those questions are going to be more prominent in different
areas of the country or the world. Yeah.
Even those questions are not ones that we usually get here in Western New York,
or at least in Chaco County in Western New York.
We'll still occasionally get some of those questions from the first list that
are kind of maybe older every once in a while.
That's really interesting. about it's like it's an interesting sociological statement
about this area it is um but you know there's one thing that i would add to
both of those lists and it is are there people who are like me at this church
like i've seen more people leave a church because they're like well.
I'm kind of the only person in my age group or i'm the only person with kids
this age or Or I kind of would prefer it to be more along with the music style or whatever.
I would kind of prefer. I've seen that.
I think that's kind of an unstated question that a lot of people ask.
And maybe I'm unfairly shifting into more of what people use as a deciding factor
as to whether or not they're going to participate in a church and less how they
distinguish. I think the original post was like, how do you distinguish churches?
I think that's maybe, I'm probably shifting into a category of like,
how did people decide whether or not to be at a church?
But, yeah. Yeah.
Agree. Yeah. Any more thoughts on that topic or that question or that?
I mean, I think we could keep talking about it. There's a lot to talk about there.
What do you think the future of that list will be?
I think the future, I think one of the future questions or views on that list
will be around, like, the nature of discipleship. Yeah.
How do we go about making disciples in the most effective way? Yeah.
A la the John Mark Colmer,
Carrie Newhoff conversation that we
referenced last week and the pathway to discipleship
and the critical journey and what do we expect out of disciples or apprentices
to Jesus and what is the purpose and the place of the church?
That's a pretty question that pretty much everyone every era has had but especially
in terms of like as the place or the body through which people are discipled
so i think discipleship and like,
um a kind of return to the old
way the old ways is uh next
thing yeah i think like the flip side of that coin might be like it's asking
the same question but differently is i feel like there might be come a time
when people ask uh is this church online enough for me.
You know so it's kind of like the two ends of the spectrum maybe or kind of
like Like, maybe the broader way to ask that is like, is this church making
disciples the way I want to be discipled?
That makes my stomach hurt. Which part of it? Like, is this church online enough for me?
I get it. I mean, I get, like, why that's probably a question that's going to distinguish churches.
But we've talked about this before.
Like i'm a big craig richelle fan right everyone knows that yeah i i i think
vr church is redonkulous i think it's dumb and i think it is come on man apple
vision pro i get it the next wave of computing i get why craig's doing it yeah but i'm like.
It ain't it. Yeah. Like, it ain't it. And I don't even think this is just like
a, oh, well, it's not a thing for Conduit and Cameron Lionheart,
but it must be a thing for Life.Church and Craig Rochelle.
No, it's not a methodology thing for me.
I think it's theological thing for me.
Yeah. You feel like it's crossing into that line of like, all right,
we have gone too far in disassociating our physical selves from each other and from the ministry.
100%. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So I get it, and I think you're right.
It's not a question that's going away. It's not a distinguishing thing that's going away.
Right. um but i think the question for me the question that hits me with that is like,
how prophetic of a voice are you willing to be in that as the as it goes in that direction right,
like am i willing to call that out or am
i just gonna say not for me and go my own direction yeah
yeah i feel passionate about that i
really really really do um so i feel like i'm gonna be calling it out and i
know that you know that probably gonna be unpopular for some people but i mean
i don't i don't know like i i don't think that i'm just like a curmudgeon who
doesn't like like technology.
No, I don't feel like that. I feel like that there is a.
That it's a, it's actually a real thing, but I don't know.
People could, people can disagree and we can, we can agree that they're wrong and move on.
All right. Well, send in your questions about VR church for Cameron.
Yes, please. Craig, we can settle this on the jujitsu mats, bro.
That is like your life goal.
Well, thanks for listening, as always, for being here. We will tag the Off the Pulpit podcast.
And we appreciate that little teaser for our conversation, Thomas.
Thank you. Appreciate your podcast.
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