125. Freedom In The Church - Services and Structure

Music Three to thrive, they often chant. A moment of rest, a wish to grant. Not just Sundays and Wednesdays, it's so much more. We're always rushing out the door. Amidst the chaotic frenzy in church life I find, and an overwhelming guilt so intertwined. From Sunday school to Wednesday prayer, so many activities, you must be there. Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Thursday soul winnings, schedules are tight. Saturday's outreach, it never ends. So many events my head spins. Revival meetings, missions too. Special guest speakers, there's always a few. VBS in the summer, bus routes all year round. With so much to do, I might just drown. Children go wild, teen activities galore. Ladies Bible studies, men's meetings, and more. Couples retreats, so much to plan. In this whirlwind, can I still stand? Choir practice and cleaning days. Christmas, Easter, endless plays. Dinners, picnics, one after another. Is there room to breathe, I often wonder. Game nights, potlucks, ice cream craze. Fellowship prep that will take up all my days. Deacons, nursery, teachers meetings abound. In this packed schedule, I'm feeling bound. Funerals, baby and bridal showers too. Wedding and baby dedication, so much more to do. No exceptions, always be there. Activity overload, it's too much to bear. In this frenzy, I must confide. Sometimes it feels like a crazy ride. In this flurry, I must confess. Sometimes it feels like a massive mess. With love and faith, is it all sincere? But is there space to breathe in here? So let's take a step back and take a break. Re-evaluate for our own sake. In the quest for growth, let's redefine. A balanced church life, that's truly divine. Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. I found my freedom in you. I found a joy I can't lose. And thank God it's true. You wrapped your arms around me. And heaven broke through. From the moment you found me. I found my freedom in you. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. It's such a blessing to be back with you today. Man, we've got a lot of things on the horizon. And we're stoked. We're ready to go. We're excited about what's coming down the pike for our podcast and some different things we've got coming up. But I'm just happy to be with you today. And I've got my co-host James here with me. James, how's your day going so far? It's doing good, Brett. We are doing some things in our church that we're actually going to talk about today in the church series. And so I was up here early yesterday and been doing some things this morning and just got done with discipleship with one of our guys here. And it was just a great time of opening scripture. We finished a book that we did. And so now we're going to start walking through some of the epistles. We're going through 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and Titus right now, just walking through each chapter each week and discussing what the Bible means and just walking through life together. You know, talking about what we're going through, the struggles, the victories that we've had. And it's just been a great time just discipleship over the last couple of weeks. And like I said, today, it was just a great time for that. So, yeah, things are going great. We're plugging a lot along. Daylight savings time. Brett, I don't know how it affected you guys. You know, as far as energy-wise, yeah, it affected me. But I really was expecting to come in and church sort of be down and low. We had one of the biggest crowds we've had since I've been here. And it was just a great time to see the Lord move. And we had some several visiting families. I'm thinking, you guys lost an hour of sleep and you're coming to church early. Like, this is crazy. But it was good. We had a good time. My brothers came in. My brother came in for the Sunday. And my mom was at church as well. And so that was a blessing to be able to have that. Well, we had kind of the opposite effect. We had the typical low day on Daylight Savings Day. So we did have some people come out. We even had some people come in for Sunday school when they were supposed to be there for the main service. And so the typical things. Now, the thing about Daylight Savings for me is I like Daylight Savings time because I like having that extra daylight at the end of the day. But I don't like losing an hour of sleep. But things are going great over here for us. On Sunday mornings, we're going through a sermon series through the Baptist distinctives. And let me tell you, a big resource of material and good study that I've used is the series that the Young Baptist podcast did on the Baptist distinctives. Yeah. I have listened to that and listened to that and poured over it and used that as a source to build this series that I'm in. And so much good information over there if you ever wanted to go take a listen to it. And, man, we're getting things together. We had a meeting with our deacons last night discussing mission trips overseas, discussing mission trips within our state, opening up some new areas of outreach in our community. Man, we've just got a lot of things. Busy, busy year for us. And so just like you, we're just loving the Lord, serving God, and loving every second of it. That's great. Love to hear that. Love to hear the church on the move. Love to hear the church on the way. And we've got a couple things coming up. Summertime will be here before we know it. And we will be taking a break during the summer. So we'll conclude this series in the end of May, and then we'll take the month of June and July off. But during that time, me and Brett are going to be getting together in Louisville. Not Louisville. I always keep saying Louisville. In Indianapolis. It was in Louisville a couple years ago. In Indianapolis. And we'll be hanging out there and hanging out and having a good time at the Southern Baptist Convention. And then just a couple months after that, we'll be having our RFP meetup. And so hopefully you'll be there. Planning to do that at Catoosa with JC's church down in Hope Church in Catoosa for the RFP meetup guys. And hopefully we'll be there. And then the last thing, a year from now, Brett, it's crazy to be thinking that we would be in Israel right now. But a year from now, we'll be in Israel. Tell us about that. Oh, yeah. We are. Listen, this Israel trip is going to be bigger than the last one that we went to. And we've got so many things planned. We've got some good things planned. We want you to come with us to Israel. We're going to tour the whole country. Listen, I know they've got some things going on over there. But once I'll tell you this, once they open up tourism, it's actually going to be safer over there because of all the precautions they're taking than it was when me and you went, James. It's going to be safer over there because of all the precautions and extra security. And we felt safe when we were over there. I mean, they were taking care of us. They look after tourists. And once tourism opens back up, it's going to be super safe to go over there. I'm stoked. I'm psyched. I'm excited to go over there. I've got people asking about the Israel trip. People are wanting to go. It's an affordable trip. It's a competitively priced trip. I doubt very seriously you're going to find a trip to the Holy Land priced better than the one that we're going to offer. So, you know, it's a great opportunity once in a lifetime. I encourage you, if you want to go, start putting back now. Go to the website. Check out our itinerary. And check it out. Pray about it. We want anybody that wants to go to go. Absolutely. We are looking forward to it. And so excited about that and about what we have coming up in the future. And so let us know if you want to go. And we'll have those details on our website as well. So other than that, man, we're looking excited what we've got going on with the future of the podcast and some of the topics we're doing. I've had some people reach out to me in the last couple of weeks as far as, you know, how to start a podcast, how to do some things. And so that's been encouraging. I'm going to be on a podcast here in a couple of weeks sharing our story and what we've done, what we've went through, and where the Lord has brought us to. And so I'm looking really excited about that. But over the next couple of weeks, we've got some getting to some of the nuts and bolts of ministry and in the church. And we're going to be discussing today service and structures in the church. And you've seen that in our title and our tagline. And so we've got hopefully coming up here in just the next couple of weeks, we'll be having Brian Edwards come on. He's going to be sharing his story of Hope Church and the evolution of Hope Church and how that looks and how change looks and how the church on mission and doing things can move forward and how sometimes it can be tough to do that. So we're looking forward to that. But today, Brett, we're talking about service and structure. Why don't you get started today on talking through what that looks like and maybe some of the nomenclavors, I believe that's how you say that, of how you would maybe experience some things in church, maybe some things that we experienced, and then we're going to sort of refute that a little bit and talk through what church should look like and how service and structure should be. So I can remember when I made the decision to leave fundamentalism, when I made the decision to leave my IFP church and get out, I remember that I was looking for a church. We found a Southern Baptist church to go to. I went and preached for them, candidated for them. Didn't tell anybody that I was going to do that because I would have been reprimanded for going to another church and candidating because I had been reprimanded for that in the past. And so I went to the church. I preached for the church. They called me. They said, we want you to come preach again if you have a call. So I went. I preached for them. And the Lord worked it out that it's where he wanted me to be. And so I took that church. It was one county over. It was 20 minutes from my house, a lot the same distance as you are from your church. And I remember going there. One of the weirdest things to get used to at that church was the fact that they did not have a Sunday night service. I thought it was the most foreign, weird, alien thing that I had ever experienced. I didn't know what to do with it. You know, it's like it's like having like wearing pants with no pockets. You don't know what to do with your hands. And so it was like I didn't know what to do with my Sunday nights because I'm so used to three to thrive. I mean, I've been at Hiles Anderson College. I heard Lee Roberson get up at Hiles Anderson College and preach three to thrive. And he, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. But then he'd also do the read your Bible, pray, go to church. That's just how Lee Roberson preached, real simple outlines. And so I just remember on Sunday night thinking, man, what do we do? And the guilt at first was so overwhelming. It's like we got to do something spiritual. So for the first few weeks, we would go to other churches. Like there was a independent Baptist church that we used to play basketball with, not far from the church that I just started pastoring. So a couple of Sunday nights, we went over there. A couple of Sunday nights, we went to another church. And then I started to see, you know what, a lot of these churches, they don't have Sunday night service anymore. A lot of these Southern Baptist churches around in the area that I was going to, they just didn't have Sunday night service. And so after a few weeks of that, I told my wife, I said, look, you know, we're just going to stay home. And the first time we stayed home, there was some guilt. There was some shame. But then there was also of, man, this is nice. You know, because you got to understand, you know, I'm a bi-vocational pastor. I run an oil change shop. My wife works for me. And, you know, I work 50 hours a week changing oil. And then I also pastor. I mean, we're blowing and going just seven days a week nonstop. And so just to have that time just to rest, to be with my family, it was so needed. We were going through a rough patch coming out of fundamentalism. I didn't realize how much I needed that family time. Yeah. And so we took that time and we would go out to eat or we would stay home and we would watch a movie or we would get a board game and we would play a board game or we would get out our Bible and we would study the Bible. But we would just do something as a family. And that was something that was missing. And it healed. It healed us so much. And it gave us rest. There's something to be said when you're coming out of a bad situation for that time just to rest, just to recharge. It's that tiredness in your soul that eight hours of sleep can't fix. You got to have some other type of rest. And it was that rest that me and my family, you know, sorely, sorely needed at that time. And it kind of just changed my whole philosophy. I didn't become a heathen. I didn't, you know, disown God and walk away from the church because I wasn't going to church on because we didn't have service on Sunday night. And it just opened me up to, you know, is three to thrive biblical? Is it spelled out in the Bible? If you don't go to Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, you don't do all those things. Is it is it biblical? I mean, I mean, I mean, and it's more than that. You know that, James. It's it's Thursday. So when it's Saturday visitation, it's, you know, knocking doors on a Sunday. I mean, you're there when you're sick. I mean, listen, I've heard of people bringing their chemo pumps to church. I mean, you just had a brand new newborn baby that's susceptible to diseases. And and you're bringing them to church. I knew a guy that had hand, foot and mouth disease. And he still came to church because he was expected never to miss. I think it's just a way to control people. You know, you know, it church. It's it's all this other stuff added into that. Just they want to fill your life, consume your life, control your life. Listen, I think that church is a part of your life. It should be an important part of your life, a vital important part, a vitally important part of your life. But church isn't supposed to consume your life. How can you ever be in the world enough to tell people about Christ if you're always at church? James, what's your take on this old saying that we've had preached to us three to thrive? Well, you know, I was raised in the three to three to thrive error as well. And I was born on a Thursday and I was in church on a Sunday. And so I've not ever known life without church. I'm part of that. You're expected to be there. My mom and dad ran a bus route and there's a picture of me in my car seat as my mom is driving the bus and my dad is picking up the kids. And I was just a little baby. And so being a part of church has been my whole life. And, you know, every day at church doing something, especially as a teenager, not necessarily as a kid, but as a teenager, doing things, being there, helping out, you know, just being involved in church was was part of my life. And so going to Bible college and then that sort of escalated even more with being at Bible college every day and then Saturday. So when in bus route, bus meeting all day visitation and then all day on Sunday, going and going and going and then Sunday night service at Bible college and then leaving there and then going to our first ministry. And same thing, you know, we're we're at church on Sunday, Monday through Friday was school and we were at the school and we were teaching and coaching. And then Saturday we were all day visitation, mowing the yards, doing what we need to do. Then we came to North Carolina. And so our life was still in that same mindset. We were working outside of the church, but we were still involved in the church as much as we could. And then we came to our last church. We were at Sulphur Springs in the head night. And same thing. You know, I'm there every day. We're working. We're doing things. And then this really weird phenomena happened. A thing may have affected you. I don't know if it affected anyone else that's listening. A little disease that came along called COVID-19. And it wasn't, you know, big in our area. I don't know if it was big in your area or not. And so all of a sudden the church shut down. Yeah. Yeah. So a little thing, a little disease, a little epidemic that came up. And so all of a sudden we're going to do a greater length of episode on COVID here in a couple of weeks. But when COVID hit, all of a sudden the church is shut down. We're not meeting. We're not doing things. We're not in church every day. We're not being around people like we were before. And so this was the first experience that I had with not having a Sunday night service. And so what do we and your wife do? Sort of the same thing you do. We sort of bend back on that. And we try to figure out, okay, how are we going to meet? How are we going to do these things? And so we did some virtual stuff. And we did some outdoor meetings. And I just sort of looked at my wife and I said, listen, let's not try to force this. Let's not try to make this happen. Let's just sort of see what happens if we invite people over to our house or just invite ourselves to be in someone's house every Sunday night. And so for about a year we weren't meeting. We were meeting on Sunday morning, but we weren't meeting formally on Sunday night. But for about a year we had almost every family in our church that had a kid or a teenager in our house or we were in their house or we had a youth party or we had a Sunday school party. We had something going on in our house just hanging out with people. It wasn't a form of Bible study. It was just hanging out, eating, fellowshipping, doing life together. And we just hung out with one another. Shame on you for not social distancing. Yeah. It wasn't worldwide. So I was able to do it. It was just a small epidemic in our area. And we hung out. We had a great time. Well, then the church started meeting back regularly again. And then the question was, do we start Sunday nights back? And I told our men, I said, listen, I said, four years ago, you'd have asked me out. I said, absolutely. A hundred percent. I'm going to down Sunday night service. Like we're going to have this. I said, but I have relationally grown closer to the people in our church by simply just hanging out with them in my house and in their house. I said, and if I ever have anything to do with it, we won't have Sunday night back because my family is rested. My family is more energetic and we are actually observing what the day is for. It's for rest and recharge. We're coming. We're hearing from the Lord. And then we're going home and we're resting. We're just enjoying company. And some of those times are just with my family. My brothers and sisters would come over and we'd just hang out. It wasn't always with the church, but it was just a time where we were able to actually use the Sabbath, actually use what it was designed to do was to rest and recharge our soul to get us ready. And I said, that feels like when we have that Sunday night, we're meeting on Sunday morning, we're turning around. And, you know, as pastors, we're getting a sermon back ready. And it's sort of halfway done because we spent most of our time on that Sunday morning sermon. And it wasn't really effective. And all of a sudden we are changing what we're doing and we saw it so much more effective. And so when I came here and the conversation has been a little bit, but, you know, are we going to do Sunday night? And I said unequivocally, no, I don't I don't have any desire to do a Sunday night service. I would rather do a fellowship and and have meals together and hang out and do a benefit and and be in someone's house on a Sunday night than to come and hear a repeat of what happened on Sunday and really get not any type of relational building whatsoever. And so that's sort of where I've fallen since this has happened. And I do see the value of a Wednesday night service. I see the value of a midweek service for youth and kids and small groups. But Sunday night, that three to thrive, you know, I like what you said. There is a lot of controlling and manipulation that happens. But when we do anything in the church, what should we use as our model? We should use scripture and we should look at what the early church did. What did the early church do? The Bible says the house, baby, daily house to house. It wasn't a one time gathering. It was daily. They're encouraging one another daily. They're been around the church daily. They're interacting with one another so that the church grows relationally. And so we need to use that as our model. We need to daily be meeting together. We need to daily be around each other. I'm not saying we daily come and have a worship service. But we're daily doing life together. We're seeing each other at the grocery store. We're seeing each other in their houses. We're going to the hospital when someone's hurt. We're providing meals when someone's in recovery. We're, as the church, working to benefit one another. Because that's what the church was doing in the early church. So why shouldn't we be doing that now? I'll tell you. Maybe six months or so ago, we traded here at Rocky Point. We traded our Sunday nights out for small groups. We call them connect groups. And man, you know, we were running 18 on Sunday nights. Now we could have 100, 120 or more on a Sunday morning. That, you know, on Sunday nights, we were running 15, 18. And so what we did is we dropped the Sunday night service. And we have connect groups that can meet anytime during the week. And what it is is I write out my sermon. And then I write out questions from the sermon that I give to my group leaders. And they can meet with their group anytime. A lot of them still come to the church and meet on Sunday nights. But others don't. I have the young adults. We meet either Monday or Thursday nights at our house, at our kitchen table. And these are, you know, college and career age guys and gals that come in. And we study the Bible. And we disciple. And we chew on the message. And our attendance, our collective attendance for these groups, small groups, are more than triple what we used to get on a Sunday night. And then for Wednesday night, we decided, you know, we're going to have a meal. And so we have a community meal. And there are people that come to our meal. They don't come on Sunday morning. And that's fine. But they come. We eat together as a church. We provide a meal. And then we come over. And we have a kids class. I do a short devotion. I don't, you know, preach an hour-long thing. We're talking 15, 20 minutes. We feed you a little bit from the Word of God. And then we have a prayer meeting. And, you know, choir practice, things like that. That's kind of our midweek thing. You know, it's kind of, you know, it's real casual. And I think that's great. And I think it's different for every church. Not every church has to follow the same cookie-cutter method that, you know, is printed out in the house church manual. And, you know, we don't have to do that. Each church is its own autonomous church led by different pastors and, you know, different leaders in different areas ministering to different people. And so you kind of adjust that to your area. And you make it fit. There's some churches they only meet on a Sunday morning, you know. But like you said, it's not like they come on Sunday morning and then the rest of the week they have nothing else to do with each other. They're still living life. They're still doing life together. And we do see that model in the New Testament. Like you said, they had the corporate meeting. They met at the portico, the temple, the synagogue, what have you. And then they would meet house to house. But then they would also have that individual one-on-one time. And you have, you know, you have examples in the Bible of, you know, like Timothy and Barnabas and Paul of them having this one-on-one time mentoring each other. And so, you know, that's what church life is all about. So go ahead. I love the liberty that the Bible lays out for us to be able to really figure out what our niche is, what we're going to do to reach our specific community and understand that what works in Mississippi may not work in North Carolina. And what works in Hot Springs, Arkansas may not work in Hammond, Indiana. And all of a sudden figuring out what works in your community and what is going to get your people excited about learning the Word of God. What's going to get your people excited about growing together and coming and worshiping and understanding that it's going to look different in every context and understanding that you can do things that are maybe not quite the same as what you were taught and you're not liberal left-wing crazy heretic. You know, understanding that goes a long way in planning out what we're going to talk about next is the services. What does the service look like? And I'm going to share a couple things as well. Brett's going to share some things. And so, Brett, why don't you take us away and start talking about sort of the structure of a service, and we'll just go back and forth and talk through this. So we've got some different elements of a modern worship service that we're going to talk through. And one of the first things we're going to talk about here is the length of service. Now, I don't know about you, James, but I've been in some long, long church services where, you know, the worship portion is, you know, 30 minutes. Then the preacher gets up and preaches for, you know, 60, 70 minutes. I'm going to preach as long as they sing. Amen. I heard that from college. If they're going to sing for an hour, I'm going to preach for an hour. Bless God. There you go. But, you know, as a pastor, from my perspective, I think, you know, you've got to be mindful of people's time. You know, my personal goal as a pastor is I shoot for kind of 12 o'clock. I think that's a good – that gives me a good 40 minutes to kind of say what I've got to say. Now, if I've got something that, you know, I need to finish, I need to get this out, the spirit is on me, you know, I don't mind holding people over, you know, five or ten minutes. I'm not going to hold them hostage to 1230. For the most part, I try to cut it off at 12. You know, we start our main service at 11, which, by the way, you don't have to do. You don't have to start your service at that time. You can start your service at 9 a.m. I was thinking you were starting at 10 and going until 12, you know. I should have made that clear. Yeah, amen. Listen, I like what Nathan does. Nathan and his Hope Church, Hope Church Asheville, they had to start – they couldn't start for, you know, reasons with the funding. They had to start their services, you know, at like 430. Well, they enjoyed it so much, as far as I know, they're still doing it. So they wake up on Sunday morning. They don't have church until 430 that evening. And it works for them, and they enjoy it. And they, you know, it gives people their Sunday to just kind of get up and rest and relax. And look, there's no set time when, you know, you have to do it. It doesn't say in the book of Acts that I'll shout, meet it, 11 a.m. You know, you just do what you need to do for your area. You know, so, you know, I kind of go – you know, I don't mind going over a little bit. You know, I do say kind of, you know, we don't have a Sunday night service. I kind of pick with the people, and I say we didn't come here to go home. But, you know, for the most part, I shoot for 12. At the same time, I think you got to, you know, be mindful of people's time, not hold people hostage. But there's nothing spelled out in the Bible. So when it comes to length of service, we do have some liberty here. What are your thoughts on that, James? Yeah, ideally I'd like to be in the service to be about an hour and a half. I'd like to – that would be my ideal service. Right now we're in an hour. And I understand people need to grow into the service and grow into where they're at and learn the context of I'm not going to come in. If they're used to a 15-, 20-minute sermon, I'm not going to unload an hour sermon on them. They're not going to be able to handle it. I got – you got to know your people. You got to know where they're at. You can't feed a steak to a newborn baby. So you got to bring them along. And so understanding that is great. And so – but right now we're about an hour. My typical message is between 35 to 40 minutes. And then we have about 20, 25 minutes of singing, worship, and scripture reading beforehand. And so that's how our service looks right now. And again, all that structure is going to change. It's going to move. It's going to – some services are going to go longer. I pick with the people because Easter is coming up and our service is going to – we're going to have a sunrise at 7, breakfast at 7.30, Sunday school at 9, and services at 10. And I had a deacon that told me, you know, hey, Brother Pastor James, you know, we'd like to be out by 12. You know, 12 o'clock hits. We need to be out of here. We're farmers. We've got to hit the field. And so I've told him, I said, hey, just get ready. You know, Easter's coming, and we're starting at 10, and I'm going to hold you to it. We're going to get out by 12. And so get ready. Buckle in. Two hours. You know, I'm going to have a long message. We're just going to sit down. We're going to open up, and we're going to preach, baby. I said, we're going to go until 12. Oh, I said, you guys put the standard on there at 12, and so I'm going to hold you to it. And so if you give me an extra hour, I'm going to take advantage of that extra hour. Exactly. Well, another thing we do, especially on Easter, is we do – this coming Easter, we're going to have breakfast at 8.30. We're going to cancel Sunday school, and actually our main service is going to start at 10. Yeah. And so, you know, and this is so people can, you know, get out and go cook. People have got roasts in the oven for Easter or whatnot. And so, you know, but it's another thing is I've also actually toyed with the idea of changing up our order of service. You know, we don't always have to do the same thing that, you know, we've always done it. We can mess around with it. Sometimes the announcements – some churches, the announcements come at the beginning of the worship, sometimes in the middle. Sometimes the announcements are after the invitation. There's no set time that you have to do these things. And, you know, recently in the past few weeks, me and you have talked about praise and worship. This is another thing we need to talk about when it comes to, you know, service and structure in a church. It doesn't have to just be all hymns all the time. You can put some contemporary music in there. I think it's wise to keep some hymns. Throw some hymns in there too because, you know, there's so much theology in these old hymns. And some of the stories behind them are so great. I don't think you ever want to lose them completely. And listen, you know, I've cracked this joke for a couple weeks in a row, but I'll do it again and see how much I can milk out of it. The Baptist police are not in the back of the church. They're going to lock you away and handcuff you if you raise your hand during a worship service. It's okay. You can raise your hand. You can sway a little bit. It's okay, you know. You know, if the Holy Spirit puts on you to do that, you can do that. What do you think about, you know, about that area? And then you can bring us into our next subject. Yeah, you know, as far as structure of the church and structure of the service specifically, right now I'm a big guy of understanding. I'm already a big guy. Yes, but I'm a big I'm big on putting everything that doesn't pertain to worship before we get to worship. So announcements, anything that goes along with things that are coming up, things that we need to be addressed, welcoming guests, things like that. I want that to be first, get it out of the way, and then the entire rest of the service directing our attention toward God. So we'll go from that to offering. We'll go to worship songs. We'll go to scripture reading. We'll go to more worship. And then we'll have the preaching of the word. And so everything is pointing toward the Lord. And so I don't like to break up in the middle of worship and throw in some announcements or throw in some, you know, something that doesn't pertain to worship. And so that's sort of the structure that I've went with over the last several years. And I've incorporated that where I'm at now. And then that leads up into the invitation side of it. And then, you know, at the very end, if there's we do communion, which we'll talk about as well. We'll do communion. And we do it four times a year. This year, I want to do that more. I want to start incorporating that more. But we'll do that on Easter. So Easter service will end the service with communion as well, which I'm pretty excited about as well. So, you know, those things and elements we can talk through and discuss. You know, I know we wanted to look through a couple of different things. And but but yeah, for the most part, that's that's sort of how I like to do things in the services. Everything is gearing our mind, gearing our heart, ultimately to the preaching of the word in that specific structure of the service. Let me ask you this. Do you guys still pass plates? So, yes, we pass the plates for offering and we pass the plates for communion as well. They at my former church, they would pass the plates for communion, but they wouldn't for the offering. And people were a little confused that we still took the offering up in the back, but it didn't affect the giving. People still gave like they needed to. And so so we pass plates. We've got our ushers that come down the aisle during that opening song. We don't I don't even announce that it's offering. I just we go into our opening song and our ushers just start passing the plates. They don't come down formally. There's not like a special prayer. There's not like we just we go into the service and open the service. People give and then while they give, you know, it gives our our secretary people to go back, count, get that all taken care of so they can come out for the service at the very beginning. So. So, yeah, that's how we do it. So, yeah. So because of that little regional, you know, little virus that went around, COVID, you know, no big deal because of that. This church actually and the church that I was in before, we stopped passing the plates and we put a box in the back. And what we found is that our offering didn't dip any. A lot of people think that, you know, the offering is going to dip if you put a put a box in the back. And it didn't. And actually, we actually preferred it. And so we actually decided, you know, there was some conversation. Are we when it comes to the offering? Are we going to bring the plates back? Are we not going to? And so we made the decision to just keep the box back there. We upgraded from a shoe box to a wooden box that a man in our church built special for our offering. And then we put it in the church by the sound booth and not where I am when I shake hands. So it doesn't look like I'm a bouncer trying to take your money from you. Right. But we have a box in the back that's an offering box. And, you know, and I think each church, whatever works for you, you know, if you want to do it, it's great. It's a great thing. We've had kids pass the plates before. The only time that I still pass the plate right right today, we still have them. And the only time I do it is whenever I have a singing group or special guest speaker and I need a love offering. So in my personal experience, if you don't pass a plate, you're not going to get a love offering. And so that's the only time we still do it. I have the kids come down, the kids pass the plates, you know, for the love offering. And so that's about the only rest of the time. It's a box in the back. And that transitions us right over into communion. Yeah, well, let me stop you right there, Brett, because we're the opposite. Okay. We we do a love offering or a benefit offering. We have baskets that up front and people come and they put their love offering in the basket. Oh, wow. So it's a completely backwards on that. We pass the plates. But that's a good thing. Yeah. And so I have no preference of that whatsoever. Now, I've got a friend of mine in Taylor's full, and he told me that they started passing the plates again just a couple of about a year ago. And he said they saw their offerings go up 10% because the people, you know, they visibly saw they're visibly given again. And so, you know, I don't know statistically if that's true or not. But but we also have to acknowledge that. Absolutely. We're different churches, different people. You do it works for your area. But sometimes the passing of the plate can be a golden calf. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just like it's got to be done this way because we've always done it this way. And if it's not done this way, you know, I'm going to cause trouble. Bless God. We need to be. I think the one of the main things through this that me and you are trying to get across in this episode is flexibility. You've got to be pliable. You've got to have flexibility. You can't be so rigid. You know, there's no set standard for this. Each church has liberty to do these things in a way that works for them. And so we need to be flexible on these things. You know, when it comes to communion and you're right, you know, we still I think what we had. Oh, you know what? I could not stand during COVID. We had those little communion cups with the juice and had the wafer and the top under the foil. They were like eating cardboard, dude. It was cardboard and fermented juice. The juice is so sour. It was so bad. Oh, well, just welches. I have nightmares about those wafers. You know, I was like, you know, as soon as we could, we came back to traditional passing the plates because I could not stand those wafers. Now, I will say, have you ever been to a church where they had intention communion? Explain that term because I've never heard it before. Intention union is where you line up and you walk down to the front and you break a piece of the bread off. You dip it in the juice or the wine and then you eat it. I've been in churches where they had intention offering communion. And for the most part, I liked it. I don't mind doing something different. The only thing I personally didn't care for was the fact that the bread was it was leavened bread. It wasn't unleavened bread. And for me, if you're going to do communion, it needs to be unleavened bread. So I wouldn't do that personally just because the bread's not unleavened. But I will say we do the traditional, you know, Lord's Supper, Baptist Church, deacons past the plate, you know. And then what we do, I do something a little bit different. One of our four times a year that we do the Lord's Supper is on Christmas. We have Christmas communion on our Christmas Eve candlelight service. And what I'll do is I'll stand at the front with the Lord's Supper at the table and I will read through the scripture. I'll pray and bless the elements. And then as the piano plays, families will line up down the center of the church and they'll come to the communion table as a family. And I pass the elements out, you know, and have them take communion as a family. And then they go back up the side and then the next family comes down. You know, it takes, you know, a good 20. Sometimes if you've got a lot of people, 25 minutes to go through everybody. But, you know, candlelight service is not a long service anyway. We're just there kind of singing hymns, singing Christmas songs. But, I mean, people really seem to enjoy that. It's different, but at the same time, it's, you know, it's the Lord's Supper. You're together as a family. People see it as a more intimate thing. And, you know, it's just something different that we try that our people really enjoy. Yeah, I like that idea, Brett. I think that doing that at a Christmas candlelight service will be fantastic. I may actually steal it from you this year and do that. Now, I have seen it done like that when at my former church, I didn't see this done. But the pastor had a wild hair about him and wanted to do a family-style communion. And so there was a – I don't know if he did this out of – because he knew there was a couple of people that were lost. The church had been praying for them. And so there was a dad that had been coming and been coming for six months and knew he was lost, been praying about him, been praying for him. The family's been praying for him. And so he said, we're just going to do communion as a family. And so we're all going to line up and we're all going to come down and we're all going to individually grab our communion and we're going to take communion as a family, the juice and the wine, all that. And so they came down. Well, he didn't. He stayed in his seat. And they said that every – and it was before I got there, everybody in the church was just looking at him, like making him feel guilty because he didn't partake. You know, if you're in the pew and you don't take, no one really sees except the guy that's serving you. And all of a sudden it was – he felt like the church was manipulating him and trying to manipulate him and make it into a salvation decision. They said he never came back to the church. They still lost a day. So that would be my only hindrance is, you know, I want the people to participate, but I don't want to guilt them into forcing them to participate because by partaking doesn't necessarily mean you're saved or lost. It's your own personal conviction at that moment. And so that would be the only thing. But, you know, in a special candlelight service, the families are coming together. It's a special service as it is. It's – we partook in communion this last time at our candlelight service. We did the communion first, and then we did candlelight after, so then we lit the candles without trying to manage the two back and forth. And so it was a great time. But I do like that idea, and I like coming forward. It's a family as well. So those are great things. Well, another element of a worship service, you know, the service and structure is the preaching. So we're going to hit on this just for a minute because I am curious to get your take on it. You know, when it comes to the preaching, I don't think that all topical all the time is accurate. I think it's harmful for you just to do nothing but jump around the Bible, pick and choose things, bring things out of context. But then I'm also not of the idea that if you don't preach expositionally verse by verse through every book of the Bible all the time that you're doing it wrong. And, you know, when I've heard – I've heard, you know, a lot of pastors that do that shame other preachers for not always doing that. You know, I do preach sermon series, but I may – I mean, I preach expositionally through books of the Bible too, but I don't always do that. Sometimes I'll preach a sermon series, but I make sure that my sermons are contextual. So, you know, I might preach a sermon series where I preach for a little bit over here, and then I go preach over here. But whatever passage I preach, I make sure that it's in context. I don't – it's still verse by verse. I don't pull out one phrase of a verse and then set my Bible down and then shoot from the hip preaching on my pet peeve for 50 minutes. I do think that contextual preaching is possible, even if it's not always verse by verse through every book. What's your philosophy on that? Yeah, I'm the same way. As long as you're expository and you're contextual in the right manner, I'm great on it. And we're going to do an episode here in a couple weeks just talking about preaching. And so I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it today, but we do – the Bible has to be supreme in everything we do. It's got to be the main reason why we're gathering to preach the word. That's why we meet as a church is to preach and to teach and to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, so that we can go out and make other disciples. And so that has to be supreme in the primary gathering is preaching of the word. And so whether it be expository through a book, whether it be through a sermon series – you know, I preach the book of Colossians. Right now I'm preaching through our core values, which those are random topics. You know, they're the core values of the church. I'm going to go in at Easter, and we're going to preach through the seven sayings of Christ, the last sayings of Christ on the cross. And so we're going to preach through that. I'm really excited about that. And then we're going to go through some psalms in the summertime. So we're not necessarily doing entire books, but we're expository preaching through some different topics and talking through stuff. And then when we come back from the summer, we're going to be going through another book. And so we'll go through verse by verse through a book. So that's sort of my schedule right now and how we're looking. So, yeah. Now, after the preaching is the invitation time, the altar call. Just as I am with – oh, sorry. Of course, it's in, you know, 2nd Hezekiah 15.3 that thou must have an invitation. Absolutely. Do y'all have invitations in your church? What's your thoughts on invitations? Yeah, we do. We have a invitation. I do like a time of response. It's not a manipulative time. I literally say every week it's our time of invitation. You can pray at your seat. You can come down front and pray. There's no special thing about coming down front, but there is a time where we need to have a time of response. And our piano player will play a verse. If no one comes down, we don't have a song that's sung. We just have a verse. We just have a song that's played. And so as they – as he plays, people respond. If no one responds, I shut it down after the first verse. I'm not going to go into this manipulative coming forward and doing different things. And then if people are there, of course he's going to play, and people can respond as they see fit. But once it's over, it's over, and we move on. It's not this big, long, drawn-out manipulating you to come down. I've seen that too many times. I've been a part of it too many times. And I have zero desire to be the Holy Spirit in that moment. If the Holy Spirit convicts and they come down, that's up to them. If not, I'm not going to be the Holy Spirit in their life. Exactly. And, you know, we have – I think we have liberty in this area. You know, we don't have to have the traditional invitations. There's nothing that spells out that we have to. I know people who – different churches is, you know, instead of an invitation, they have rooms that you can go to after the service that has, you know, pastors in those rooms, and they take turns in the rooms counseling people. There are some churches where after the service, you know, you – the pastor says, if you want to talk to me about something that I said in the service, I'm in my office in these hours and come talk to me in my office. And I think you hit the nail on the head. We have to be so careful about emotional manipulation. You know, that's always a concern. I don't want to manipulate anybody. I'm not the Holy Spirit. I've been in churches where they play verse after verse after verse, and, you know, the pastor would get up and say, there are two reasons to come to an altar. One, because God talked to you, and two, because he didn't. And just try to manipulate you to come down. And I've been in churches where the pastors are walking the aisles, and they're dragging people down to the altar. So, you know, I want to stay as far away from that as I possibly can. Now, for me personally, I hold an invitation time. I hold a response time because I look to the book of Acts, and I see when Peter preached his message, they looked at Peter and said, what do we do now? And Peter said, repent and be baptized. And they did. So there was a call and response after the message in Acts, I believe. And, you know, I think that that personally, I think it's biblical, but it's not spelled out. And so, you know, if you do something different, I'm totally okay with that. But me personally, I always like to give a gospel opportunity, a gospel, you know, opportunity in my invitations most of the time. But listen, and here's another thing, and something you kind of inadvertently brought up. The music that we play during our invitation time, it's not always the same traditional I surrender all just as I am. You know, the IFB churches, they had three invitation songs that no matter what was preached, it cycled through these I surrender all just as I am songs. Ask me not, O tender Savior. That's right. That's right. Amen. Our invitation song always has something to do with the message. I didn't tell my music director to do this. She just does it. And I love it. It always has something to do with the message that was preached. There's no manipulation there. And I definitely think that that is something that, you know, it's to each church, whether they do it or not, it's not spelled out. I personally do it, but at the same time, I distance myself from manipulation. Two more quick things before we close out here. Prayer during the service. You know, we, on our Sunday mornings, we go through some of the new names on our prayer list. We take a time to open up and take prayer. You know, is there anybody else? Do you have anything you want to add, you know, to our prayer list? So we do take prayer requests on Sunday morning. I know some churches do that. Some churches don't. I think it's okay either way. I just want to make sure that when we're taking prayer requests, it's not an excuse to turn it into a gossip session. Yeah. I don't want to be, you know, Hey, I want to pray for so-and-so. Now let me tell you what they did. And so I want to start with that. James, what are your thoughts on that? And then you can bring us into our last thing. Yeah. So we do an opening pastoral prayer is how I have it set up. So I open the service in prayer after I give the announcements. And then our deacons lead in leading scripture, reading scripture and taking of prayer requests. And then they have a prayer. And then to close the service, of course, I end my sermon in a prayer. And then to dismiss the service, I typically will call on someone from the crowd, from someone from the audience to dismiss us in prayer, whether that be a deacon or a lady. I'll have various different people pray to dismiss the service. And so that's sort of how we do it. When I got here, they were doing what was called a silent prayer. And there wasn't a lot of outward verbal prayers. And so I quickly changed that because I wanted, people need to see and hear modeled prayer. And so we did that very quickly. That was a very, very, very easy change for me to do. And so that, I believe there's multiple forms of prayer. There's prayers of lament. There's prayers of confession. And we go through some of those prayers. A lot of times I'll model those prayers as that first pastoral prayer, whether it be a praise of adoration, whether it be a prayer of confession, whether it be a prayer of sacrifice, of saying, God, we need you, whatever it may be that morning, is sort of what I'll model. And then I'll, of course, the freedom of whoever's praying will have their time of prayer as well. So, yeah, those are our prayers. Real quick, I also want to say, for our service, I've got a lot of good men. I've got all of our deacons. I will call on to pray. I actually take those prayer requests. I don't pray for them. I let some men in our church pray. We've got all our deacons, of course, are available for prayer. Then I have other men that I can call on to pray. And here's my personal philosophy on this. You know, when I call on, I'm not going to just randomly call on somebody to pray. I'm going to go talk to that person because I've been in churches where you call on somebody to pray and they look like deer in the headlights. So I'm going to go to that person and say, I went to a man a couple weeks ago and said, hey, do you mind praying from time to time in the service? And so they said, no, I don't mind that at all. And so mentally, I added them to my list of men to call on. I'm not just going to call on somebody randomly, but I do have those men that I've talked to beforehand that I know that are comfortable with it. And I'll ask them to pray. And you're right. I think it's a good thing to, you know, hear the men pray in the church. Yeah, I agree with that as well. I was told sort of when I got it, so for my former church, where, who not to call on, they weren't comfortable praying. And so I knew sort of who to call on, who to have to pray, whatever. Or, well, then during, right before COVID, we had a man that very, very influential leader in our church who had a stroke. And he was doing well. He was very high functioning, just had some memory lapse problems. He asked to stop doing some things just because he couldn't remember a lot of things. And so after COVID and we had a lot of transition, we came back and it was one Sunday we were meeting and I just said, hey, Frank, why don't you dismiss us in prayer? And he looked at me and said, no. I was like, wow. Dude, I was blown away. I said, oh, okay, well, I'll dismiss him. And so he came up to me afterwards and like, hey, I thought I told you, but maybe I just told a former pastor. But after my stroke, I just don't, I don't have the mental acuity to be able to verbally pray in public. I get my words called up very quickly and very easily. And so I told him not to call on me to pray. I guess I never told you and I'm really sorry, but I just, I wasn't going to embarrass myself. I said, well, no problem, Frank. Thanks for embarrassing me. It's not a problem. And so it was, it was one of those moments like, oh, I'm going to make a mental note of not to call on Frank. And so, but that, that happens as well. All right. Last thing we'll talk about is our thought of streaming our services. We are going through a massive upgrade overhaul in our church right now. New TVs, new live stream cameras, new live streaming equipment. That's what I've been working on all yesterday, today, running wires, terminating wires, getting things ready. And so streaming services, we're in a modern day of age of getting our services on platforms that are the social media or the town square, as I like to call it. Everywhere you see in scripture, Paul went where the people were at. And Paul and Jesus would go there and would minister to those people. The common square, the town square, the public square, the public, where the public got their information. That's where the people were at. That's where the preachers went. Public meeting place, the public square is no longer on the corner store. It's in our pockets. It's on our phones. It's at our homes, on our TV. And so I think it would be wise for us as churches to, I'm not saying you have to have a Andy Stanley production service that's millions of dollars of cameras and equipment, but doing it right and doing it effectively goes a long way. The camera that we're using, we just upgraded to a brand new camera. Hopefully it'll be ready for Sunday. It's high quality. It's user friendly, which is great for our setting and our device, but we didn't spend half a million dollars on it. And so it's understanding that you can have a quality performance of equipment, not performance, but a quality equipment production. I should use the word production that is going to portray, Hey, we understand that it's right to be in the public square. It's right to be where the people are at and getting our content out in a meaningful way, uh, on podcast, on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter, and getting that information out there. Um, I I've, I've taken after you, Brad, I've been taking, uh, some sermon clips out of my sermon and putting it onto a reel and just putting a 30, 40 second clip out. And man, you don't know how many times people have shared that. And then messaged me and said, I really love what you're doing. I really love those little one minute sound bites that are, that are getting my attention that maybe I missed the service and I'll go back and listen to your message because you said that one thing that, that was really impactful. Um, and so I think those are tactful ways to get the message of the gospel out, to get the message of the church out and be where the people are at. I agree with you, especially on, you brought up the town square, you know, that's where it is. You know, I think that the streaming services, Facebook live, uh, things like that. I think it's, it's a really great thing used effectively. Um, it can be a great tool. Now I understand why it's not for every church and not every church should do it. I know that if you let it, it can become a crutch. I know there are people out there that are physically unable to come to a church service and, uh, they watch it every week. We've got some shut-ins in our church that can't physically come to church, but they watch the live stream every week. And for them, I know it's a blessing. But then there are other people who are perfectly able to come to church, but they just, you know, they don't, you know, cause they're lazy and, and they don't want to come. And I know it can become a crutch. It could become an excuse. I understand that. But for the most part, uh, you know, I don't think it's, it's definitely not a substitution for church, but I think if done the right way, it can definitely, you know, be a big benefit and help, you know, reach out to your church. You're like, for instance, my church here, we're out in the middle of the woods. I mean, we're out, you know, in, you know, out in the sticks. And my thinking is if we don't stream ourself, ain't nobody going to know we're out here. Yeah. Um, but then I think about like JC's church and, and JC has made the decision. They don't live stream their services. Uh, he's at, uh, Hope Church Catoosa. They don't live stream their services, but they do upload it to YouTube, um, a week after. And, and that works for them. Um, they, there's, I think they're still using the digital media effectively for what works for them. And, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So I do think I do, while, while it can become a crutch, it can be abused. And misused and not used the right way. Especially if, you know, like I said, you ain't got to get some professional, you know, equipment. It's amazing what you can do with an iPhone. Uh, but you know, you don't want it to look ratty as well. But I think it can definitely be a benefit. I think it's here to stay. I don't think it's going anywhere. It's something that we're just going to have to get used to. And I think if used the right way, it can be quite an effective tool to spread the gospel. And the word about your church. Absolutely. And overall, be professional about it. Don't, don't do anything halfway. Exactly. What you're putting out is, is the name of Christ. And so we need to be professional. If we're going to do it, do it right. Um, do it legitimately and, uh, and take some time about it. I think the one thing, um, that it's good to know, uh, there's a big church in, in Taylor'sville. And, uh, I was talking to the pastor a couple of years ago before, before COVID, before everyone was live streaming everything. And he said, cause you know, we're, we're talking even at that point, do we live stream? Do we not? This is before any virus before anything. And we talked to several pastors. One guy said, don't do it. He said, ever since we started it, I'll get messages of people laying in bed and they'll take a picture of their breakfast on their lap and say, great message this morning, pastor. And they'll have the, the service on the TV. And he said, I've got people that are watching from home and it's convenient for them when they're not coming into church. Uh, and so you've got that, that side of it, but then you've got others that, uh, I was talking to a pastor and he said, we started live streaming. And he said, we had a visiting family and they came in, they knew my name, they knew my wife's name, they knew my kid's name. They knew a lot of people in our church, not because they had ever been, not because they were in the community. They had just moved to the communities eight months ago. He said, but when he came up and introduced me and he said, we've been watching you online for the last six months. And we've just wanted to see what type of church you were. We agree with your church. We're comfortable now stepping foot in your church. We don't know who we're reaching. We don't know who's watching. We don't know who is, is, is just testing church out for the first time. And so, you know, John asked me this, just this yesterday, we're talking about live streaming because we're putting all these things up. And he said, what's your, what's your average view? I said, our average view is between 80 to a hundred when service ends on Facebook. I said, now by the end of the week, it's two to 300 people as people share it and things like that. But, but there's an extra 80 to a hundred people that are watching the service. Whether they ever step foot in the door, they're watching what's going on. Whether that's a minute clip, whether that's a three minute clip or whether they watch the entire thing, they're watching part of our service because they have an interest in some way, shape or form. And I said, so it would be me to do diligence to make sure what we're putting out there is quality so that the gospel ultimately will be spread by any means possible. What did Paul say? I become all things to all men that I might reach some. And that's what we're doing. We're taking the things that God has given us in this day and age through podcasts, through video conferencing, through recording our voices, through putting out a reel, by all means, we're trying to reach some. That's 80 to a hundred people. Not just that's, that's unchurched people. Oh yeah. Yeah. 80 to a hundred unchurched people have watched your service while you're preaching. They weren't in that service, but they, even if they just caught a glimpse, they caught a clip. Um, you know, whether they watch the whole thing or they watch for five minutes, it's still a witness to them. And you can't deny, you know, there are naysayers out there that will, you know, decry social media and streaming, but it's not going anywhere, but it can be such an effective tool. But you're right. You know, if you're going to do it, do it right. Uh, cause you are representing Christ. Absolutely. Well, it's been a great time talking with you today. Uh, we've got some great things coming up. We've got, uh, hopefully Brian Edwards in a couple of weeks, Marcus Merritt's going to come on. We're going to be talking about colleges and seminaries, uh, preaching COVID parachurch ministries. We've got some great things lined up. And so we hope you'll continue to join us over the next couple of months as we wrap up this series of in the church, uh, in May. And so until next time to God, not the pastor, be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning. It has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the for freedom podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast or whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the for freedom podcast. I will. I will. I will. Thank you.

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