134. Freedom In The Church - The Aftermath of COVID

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Saferick and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. Another week, another time to be able to sit down behind the mic. Another time to be able to open up and share what the Lord has laid on our heart. I want to just start out by thanking all of our listeners and supporting our show. I was checking some statistics today as I was uploading some episodes and saw Brett. We're almost at 82,000 downloads for the episodes we've got out. It's been great. It's been great to be a part of the network of the RFP network and the brotherhood and sisterhood of the podcasts. And if you don't know about that, go check them out. If you go to our website, forfreedompodcast.com, we've got a link to each of those websites or podcasts on there as well. The Recovering Fundamentals podcast, the Growing Grace podcast, the Beer and Bible podcast, the Men of Valor podcast. Brett, am I missing any off the top of my head there? I think that's about all of them, I think. Yeah. I know there's some on there that haven't released any in a while, but they're there. Go check them out and enjoy their content. I know the Growing Grace. I get encouraged every time I listen to those ladies talk. And what they've got, Kristen and Shannon over there, is they proclaim truth to women and to men as well. But their specific platform is to women and doing a great job over there with what they're doing. And so go check them out. Listen to them as well. And it's been great to be going through this series of In the Church. Last week, we got to talk about preaching and what that means and how it can help. Or two weeks ago, I'm sorry. And last week, we shared Brother Brett's testimony or not testimony, service of translations. I'm getting my letters mixed up. Translations. And being able to talk through that. And so it was a blessing. I hope you enjoyed that. I know I did. And him and Mike Winger did a great job presenting that truth to us. And, man, we just enjoyed that. We got a great talk today. But, Brett, Mother's Day was just now happened this past Sunday. Is your mother still alive, Brett? My mothers, they made it. They survived. And I'll tell you, I don't, you know, rarely do I ever preach a Mother's Day message. You know, it's if I'm going through a book or if I'm in the middle of a series, I usually don't stop for Mother's Day. I used to do that. I used to preach to the mothers every year, preach to the fathers every year. And then one year I switched it up. I was like, on Mother's Day, I reamed out the fathers. And on Father's Day, I reamed out the mothers. I've done that before. But here lately, I've just been trucking right along. I'll say something at the beginning of the service. And I'll recognize the moms and the dads. And I'll read some scripture and have a few statements and pray. And so we'll acknowledge him in the service. But, you know, when it comes to the sermon, I'm just going to do whatever sermon series that we're in, which currently right now we're going through Jeremiah. But we did have a great day, great Mother's Day. We had a good crowd. We had a lot of moms in the service. So we had a lot of visitors, of people who were coming out of town to visit mom. And so, you know, we had a pretty good crowd on Sunday. In addition to that, we recognized some of our graduates that had graduated from college. And we had about five graduates in the service, myself included. And so we recognized the graduate Sunday. And, man, we just had a great Sunday. We had service an hour early for Mother's Day, which is usually what we do when we have Easter or Mother's Day or Father's Day, things like that. We always have an hour early service. And without fail, we always have some people come in late. That's usually how it goes. But that's okay. It happens sometimes. But as far as, man, I have really thoroughly enjoyed this series that we've been in on the podcast, in the church. Talking about the church is something that I absolutely love. Got a lot of good responses from the episode last week. Thank you to everybody for your comments and encouragement. And we do hope that it helps. We were talking about the content of the thing. And James was like, well, let's just post the sermon on there. I was like, well, let's do that instead of rehashing it. So I hope you got something out of it. You can go check that out. And, of course, you know, like I said, I want to give credit where credit is due. You know, 90% of that came from Mike Winger. So I definitely don't want to, you know, pretend like I'm the one that thought it up. He did a lot of good research and it was really good stuff. And that series that he preached was what really brought me out of the King James only mind thought before I stumbled on to the RFP. Mike was already bringing me out of that. So that series, that three message series that I preached is something that he preached. And it meant a lot to me in my Christian walk. It grew me a lot. And I was thankful to get to share it with my people, get to share it on the podcast. And I'll share that information anywhere that I can. But you had a good Mother's Day this past Sunday? Yeah, we had a great Mother's Day. Again, we had visitors as well. This was my first Sunday as senior pastor, first Sunday here at the church. And again, I'm with you. I don't always want to preach a Mother's Day specific message or a Father's Day, Memorial Day. That's not what I'm about. And I told our church that. I said, I don't, I won't typically do this. But it just so happened that we were preaching through the final sayings of Jesus, the seven final cries on the cross. And we pulled out the woman. This is your son. Son, this is your mother. And so we switched that up a little bit and pulled that out. And so talk through suffering and loss and hurt and Jesus taking time in his final sayings, final words or lasting words. And one of those final words was to his mom. And so we felt like that was important in our preaching to do that. And so it was a great time. My mom is still alive. I'm blessed to have that. My wife's mom is still alive as well. And they live in North Carolina now. Both of them, my other in-law do as well. And so we got to go see both of them on Mother's Day and got to hang out with them a little bit, which is something that my wife hasn't been able to do for the last 13 years to see her mom on Mother's Day because she's been in a different state. And so with her moving back, that was a blessing to her. And us being able to hang out with mom as well was great. So, yeah, we had a great time, great weekend, exciting time just to be around family and great turnout service. Man, we were packed full. It was, I would almost say it was probably the highest attended Sunday since I've been here. I don't have the official number or anything yet. But, man, it was very full for us. And so that was a great time, great turnout. And you talked about how, you know, when Jesus is talking to John and his mom, how that means we're supposed to pray to Mary. Yes. Because her son listens to her. That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah. And we're supposed to always call them women. Woman. He didn't say mom. He said woman. This is your son. That's right. That's right. That's right. So, well, great. Well, Brett, we've got a couple of things coming up. We've got our, man, Indianapolis, man, it's going to be here in like less than a month. Like, really, I was double checking some things and realizing, man, we are, man, just a couple of weeks away. My kid's last day of school is next week. And so they get out a little earlier. And then like two weeks later, we're going to be in Indianapolis. So like three or four weeks away, we're there. And, man, we're already looking at a couple of things to do while we're there. Trying to figure out just, you know, we'll get there on that Saturday, be there Sunday morning for a service. And then the convention starts or the conference starts Sunday night. And then the convention will start that Tuesday. And so, man, I'm excited. I'm excited about being there with you. I'm excited about hanging out with some family and some friends that are going to be up there to be around us. And so I hope you'll be in the, if you're in the area, let us know. We'd love to get together, get lunch, get dinner sometime and just hang out and just enjoy our time together. It's so cool that JC is coming to Indianapolis just to see us. Like he's making a special trip up there. Absolutely. Just to hang out with us, just to come see the For Freedom podcast. And I appreciate that, JC. I think it shows a lot on your part. And we're going to return the favor come November when we come to your church to see you at the For the Sake of the Gospel conference. It's the first weekend in November at Hope Church Catoosa in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, which is just outside of Chattanooga. We want to encourage you to come to this conference. This is a time where, you know, we're recovering fundamentalists, the ex-fundies. We have our own community and we get together and, you know, we're not, you know, bashing anybody. We just talk about the gospel. And that's what it's all about. It's a gospel centered. It's not a session where we get together and gripe and moan and complain about our past and rehash old stuff. And that gets old real quick. We're coming together to put the focus on what the focus should have always been about and what the focus needs to be about today. And that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's a great time to refresh, recharge, replug in, get refocused and recentered. And you are not going to be disappointed that you made the time to come to the For the Sake of the Gospel Conference. So don't forget about that. We want you to come. We want to meet you there. We want to see you. And if you make plans to do that, we'd be grateful for that. And then I think our last thing, what we got there, James? Brett, that could have been the greatest segue in all podcasting history. You like that? Yeah. Indianapolis to the For the Sake of the Gospel, tying JC in there. You know, rumor has it that JC is going to take us out to dinner Sunday night and pay for it. So I'm really excited about that and him being able to do that. We'll actually see if he listens to the episodes. From the grapevine to your ears. That's right. He's going to take care of it. And so, yeah, Israel's coming up in March of next year. We're less than a year away. We're 10 months away now and excited about being back in the Holy Lands. And hopefully you'll make plans to join us and be with the For Freedom podcast in the Holy Lands experience. Just the thrill of knowing that Jesus walked there. The thrill of knowing the different Bible characters. The different things that Scripture talks about is right there. And we'll be there to experience it. And it'll definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, change your life. It'll change the way you read your Bible. It'll change the way you interact with Scripture. And so hopefully you'll make plans to join us and be there with us next year in the first week of March there in Israel. And so, Brett, we are – go ahead. Well, I was just going to say that one of the things that I think we should mention is – I don't know if it's podcast related, but it is me and you related – is that it's getting more serious that me and you are about to go on a mission trip together. Absolutely. And we're going to go to Nicaragua. And that is something that some of my people are looking forward to, and I know some of your people are looking forward to. We're getting our passports ready to go to Nicaragua. And, James, do you mind giving us a little bit of detail about that? Absolutely. Yeah, we're going to be down in Nicaragua in September. And I was connected with this organization a couple of years ago before COVID. And we were trying to go down there with my former church and it just didn't work out after COVID. There were some things in Nicaragua after COVID with politics that just didn't work out. And so when we began talking about mission trip and where to go, I reached out to United Christian Missions. And they're sort of changing their philosophy of ministry. And it really appealed to me so much more because we're going to go down. They've got nine church plants and they're planting one more new church right now. So they'll have ten. And the goal of this whole organization is they took over new leadership and they have really tried to empower the pastors and plant these churches more pastor church centered. And so what the goal is, is for us to go down and connect with one of these pastors and eventually create a support system to where a church here in the States will partner with that church in Nicaragua for two years. Partner with the pastor financially through prayer service, through mission trips, and for the next two years go down and really just be able to invest and pour into them. And so we've got five of us going for six total, me plus five more from our church. And really excited about being able to go down and be a part of this organization down in Nicaragua. It's called United Christian Missions. And, you know, when I was talking, you took me up with the missionary, Brother Lee Howe. And it was really cool having him just having a phone conversation with him, getting his heart for ministry, getting his heart for what mission should be. And I just totally agree with his philosophy that so many times we want to go out, we want to pass out a bunch of tracts, we want to have these meetings and, you know, lead people to the Lord, and then they've got no place to go. So the mission really needs to be focused on church building, building up existing churches, planting new churches, really focusing on discipleship. And that is what's going to make a difference. And I'm just excited to be a part of this, and I'm looking forward to it as well. And if it doesn't change anything else, you're going to have three redheaded gingers overtaking Nicaragua and taking it by storm. And it's never going to be the same when we leave. I mean, I don't know if there's been that much ginger hood in one area, but I'm telling you, it's going to be revival fires will happen. And it's going to be great. That's right. But we are excited about that. So, Brett, let's go ahead and intro into our episode today, talking still in the church. And, man, we've enjoyed our series so far. And so I hope you have enjoyed it as well. Continue to give us comments. But let us know what your thoughts are on that. But, Brett, talk about what we're going to talk about today in our episode. I'll tell you, COVID had a big impact on the church, had a humongous, lasting impact on the church. Things happen with COVID that we just never thought would ever happen. And what we want to do today is we want to discuss the effect of COVID-19 on the church. Like, what was, you know, church like pre-COVID? What was it like during COVID? What are the lasting effects after COVID? Are these changes good? Are these changes bad? Are they a mixture of both? And this is something that we're going to talk about today. And so, you know, I can remember that COVID was so weird. I mean, it was unlike anything that I had ever experienced before. Like, I had never had anything shut us down in that way. Just to give you a little background, I grew up under a pastor who would have church in a tornado warning. He was like, if it's tornadoes coming, church is safer than your home. So you come to church, tornado warnings, tornado watches didn't mean a thing to him. So, you know, I have trouble even today a little bit because I was raised that way of canceling church for any given reason. And so to shut down the church was something that was so weird and so foreign to us. And do you have did you have any experience like that? Yeah, Brett. So we at my former at my home church, we weren't that dogmatic. But at Gospelite in Hot Springs, where my wife grew up at, they she said she was there for some fourth grade till she graduated college. So it's like 18 years total, I think. She said, I don't remember a time we shut down church. I don't remember a time we didn't have Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. It was always there. We didn't cancel for church. We didn't cancel for Mother's Day. We didn't cancel for Easter. We didn't cancel for Christmas. Like we were always there. It didn't matter what the holiday or what the weather was saying outside. We fast forward to Idaho. They, of course, never canceled for anything because people are used to driving in snow. We get to our former church where we were at for six years. And it's like, hey, it may snow on Sunday. And they're forecasting this on Wednesday. And so by Thursday, we cancel church. And we're like, whoa, wait, what? It's a possibility. Like it's not even a for sure thing. And we're already canceling church. And so it was sort of the running joke of, well, it's going to it's going to rain today. So no church with me and my wife, of course. And and we we just the other day. So this was Wednesday night. We were last Wednesday. We're in church. Had our small groups and we're eating dinner before at the church. We have we do a little meal right now, testing this out. And I said, hey, Allie, look, this is a church right across from our house. And it said due to the potential hell storm, we're going to cancel church. And it's a Southern Baptist Church in Alexander County. I'm not going to say the name. And she was like, are you serious? And said, yeah. Literally, someone commented below like five minutes later, they just reported that the storm is heading north. We could probably still have church. Nope. We're still not having church. And so I got here and we're joking about it a little bit. We're laughing because it's like, OK, if people can't use discretion, like some people can get there safe and it's fine. And I understand some grandma is going to come to church and you don't want to be responsible. But at some point, we've got to let people make their own decisions and not just cancel for anything. So there are certain things I say yes, cancel for others. I'm like, if people feel safe, come. If not, don't like that's just where I'm at. We haven't had that experience here yet. We haven't had snow in three years in North Carolina where I'm at. So I'm snow deprived. And so I haven't been at this church during that experience. So I don't know how we'll respond to that. But I'm sure if it's snowing, we'll probably cancel. As a pastor, I know that when it comes time, you know, Mississippi, we've got this is tornado country and that we get tornado warnings and watches all the time. And so when there's a potential tornado watch coming, we usually cancel the service, especially if the squall line is going to come through about the time we're going to be at church. But there's no worse feeling than pulling the trigger and canceling church. And then you nobody showed nobody goes to church and then the storm goes around you and it's like sunshiny and the birds are chirping. But it's too late. It's done. There's no church. And so it's all you always hate that feeling. But then you always fall back to better safe than sorry. I would hate to pull people out, get them here and then have a squall line come through and then people have to drive to or from church in that storm. And so that's that was the mentality that we were in at the time. Like we didn't shut down for anything. And I remember when COVID started, we finally we made the decision that that, OK, 14 bread, 14 days to stop the spread. And so we're this is just going to be for two weeks. And then they added another two weeks and another two weeks and another two weeks. It was like playing a bad game of Uno. It's just they kept adding two weeks to the end. And I remember that I lived in Louisiana and I worked in Mississippi at the time. And so my boss had to actually write me a paper, an excuse so that I could cross the state line to go to work every day. Because as an oil changer, I guess I was an essential employee. And so I had to go to work. And just that that's very interesting that we had to do that. Now, my dad called them. My dad called it the Gestapo papers. He said I got my he worked for Freightliner. So he was an essential worker. He said, I got my I got my Gestapo papers. I can travel to work. And he said he said, if you don't, he said, just throw a crying kid in the backseat and say, I'm out of diapers and I got to get to the store to get diapers. He said, if anybody pulls you over, it'll be all right. Because we just had we just had a baby. So I said, that's good. It's good. So I'm at I'm at work, you know, for the first week. I think I preached online. I preached a message online. Facebook. Now, the church that we ran, they did not have online. We had a Facebook page, but we did not live stream service any services. So the first live stream services that we had was that first week when I preached online. OK, I think I preached in my office with a camera set with my camera set up. Well, then I get to work that week and I get pneumonia. OK, this is height of covid. This is immediately when everything is is is going on with covid. Things are shutting down masks. I get pneumonia. Now, we assume it was covid pneumonia because I've never had pneumonia in my life. But we don't know that for sure, because at the time they weren't testing anybody that didn't have a fever and I never had a fever. So they wouldn't test me. Now they'll test you. You know, if you stub your toe, they'll test you for covid. But back then, if you didn't have a fever, they wouldn't test you. So I never I never knew if it was covid related or not. I tend to think it was. So I leave work. I go home. I've got pneumonia. And that in and of itself was horrible. And so I'm at home sequestered with pneumonia. And so for the next three or four weeks, I would post sermons that I had preached in the past that my people had never heard. So I had a couple of sermons for my previous church on my computer that I would I would load for the people. And let me say at this point, once again, before covid, we did not have online services at all. I was pastoring an unaffiliated Southern Baptist church. They didn't belong to the convention, but because they had just pulled out when I got there. But for all intents and purposes, it still was a Southern Baptist church. But as far as Southern Baptist churches go, it was a very it was a very conservative Southern Baptist church. Like, let me tell you how conservative this church was. Like one time I suggested that we use some Google free money to get some free advertisement on Google. And I got shut down because Google was the devil and Google's the government. So very old fashioned. So they didn't live stream their services. But covid pushed us into that. Covid forced our hand into online services. And I remember that I posted sermons for about a month. And then, you know, there was a couple of times where I preached behind the pulpit in the auditorium and we had a phone set up on a ladder. And I preached I preached a couple of sermons in the auditorium. And then so that was about six weeks. And then we had our first parking lot, sir. First and only parking lot service where I preached at the front of the church and everybody parked in the parking lot. And by this time, it had been six to eight weeks. We were fed up. And so we were we said, look, we're coming to church no matter what. We roped off every every other pew. We put out masks. We put out hand sanitizer. We put all that out, all that stuff. And we went back to in-person services. But a couple of things that continued were the online services for Facebook, which we started doing regularly. And then we switched from passing the plates to an offering box in the foyer. And when that was over, we kept the offering box. So that was one of the changes that we made. What was your experience during COVID, James? All right. So COVID came. Of course, if you know me, I listen to political podcasts all the time. I try to stay up date with the news. I know some pastors don't. They think it affects their preaching. I would rather know more than know less, especially in different situations. And I don't think it affects my preaching at all. I just think I can compartmentalize that stuff. And so I knew of this virus that was coming out in January, February. It was starting to make some waves, some landfall. But again, it wasn't. I heard some small isolation things. People were closing things down. And I was actually preaching the Sunday before COVID hit on March 15th, I think it was, at a friend's church across town. And I got up and I preached, and as I do at every church I go to, when I preach for someone, and I'll say, all right, well, I hope that the church survives after I leave. I hope I don't screw everything up or something along those lines. And then literally, I preached. And then two days later, every church shut down. Every church went viral or virtual. And I text. His name's Paul. I said, Paul, sorry I messed your church up. Like, I preached and. All your fault. Like, it was all my fault. And so we talked through that a little bit. Pre-COVID, me and my pastor were, we were dabbling with this thought of live streaming. We had cameras set up. We had a decent internet service. And so we had began talking. Do we live stream? Do we not? And so what we did was we literally just went to a couple of pastors in the area and said, hey, you live stream. You're a bigger church. Pros and cons. Give it to us. And I, every pastor we talked to, they said, don't do it. Don't live stream. They said, it is an excuse for people to stay home and not be a part of the church. One church specifically, largest church in town. And he gave some horror stories of members literally sitting in bed with their pajamas on, eating breakfast, taking a picture of the TV, praying for your pastor, enjoying the message today. And he just said it was just, it was disgusting because we had already gotten there and we can't go back. Once you turn that page, you can't go back, he said. He said, so I would suggest not doing it as much as you possibly can. And so that was sort of our process through it. We decided that at that time, you know, the financial money to put into to get the new cameras and some other things for our soundboard, it was just going to be cost-wise not effective to do it based on we didn't think it would be a reasonable thing. So we didn't do it. We didn't go that route with COVID, before COVID. But pre-COVID, I'm sure most of you who are listening was the three to thrive. I always say it's even four to thrive. Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. You had to be there for all four things. Amen. You were in person, man. You didn't do anything virtually. You did everything online. You did everything in person, face-to-face. And so pre-COVID, this is where it was at. When COVID hit, they hit that Sunday, we went virtual. And starting that Wednesday, I did a lesson every single Wednesday night for our teenagers online. We already had a church Facebook, a youth group page. And so I started putting out videos. I started doing like, it was March Madness. So I did March Madness brackets of fast food and ice cream. And just anything to get people involved. And I had a great time with it, man. We were seeing parents and kids filling out brackets and just doing great things together. But just not being together physically was horrible. And so we began to, again, we're recording videos with phones and cameras and trying to piece together graphics. And just, I mean, literally limp through this. And so we did that for the first couple of weeks. And then we got close to Easter. And so we wanted to be in person. And so we began to meet outside in the parking lot. And we set up some speakers. We had a trailer set up. We set up a stage. And we started doing outdoor drive-in services for about four or five weeks. Did graduation service outside. And then the first Sunday of June, which was the last Sunday for my pastor, because he resigned during COVID. He resigned during those three months. Was our first indoor service. And we were back inside. And that was an emotional time for us. But coming through COVID, there were some things that died that needed to die. There were some things that were brought to life that needed to be brought to life. And understanding that was huge for us. Because when everything stops, it's harder to get the wheels turning back on something than it is to just start something from fresh. So think of an old car that drove for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles. Grandpappy drove it. And it was a great vehicle. And he decided to stop driving it. Parked it in the back of the house. And it sat there for 40 years. And it's rusted. And it's tired. And it's old. And everything's dry rotted. But, man, to get that thing up and going is a whole lot of hard work. You've got to take things apart. You've got to replace things. You've got to rebuild that thing from scratch. And it can be tough. Versus going to the Ford dealership and saying, hey, I need a new truck. And they give you a brand-smaking new truck with everything ready to go. All the bells and whistles. You put the key in. You start it up. And you go. That's a brand-new ministry. It's like a brand-new truck. You don't have to work. There's work behind it. There's volunteers that are involved in it. There's people involved in getting it going. But it's a lot easier deal. But when something has died and you're trying to bring it back to life, it's a lot harder work than something that's brand-new starting up. And so in this situation, I knew of a pastor who literally, it's a true story, who after COVID, he was a missions pastor for the church. He did all the outreach, all the evangelism. And they began to say, okay, hey, we're starting back good news clubs. We're starting back in-school stuff. We're starting back these different programs. And he literally just said, here's my two-week notice. It's too hard for me to get these volunteers because no one wants to volunteer again. I'm reviving dead ministries that people were doing out of obligation before. And now they're not obligated to do it anymore because they had a reason to stop. And they don't want to do it anymore. And so it's hard for me to do this, so I'm just done. Now, lack on his part, he shouldn't have gave up in ministry, but he did because restarting some things that are dead is really, really hard in ministry. And that's what COVID did. It killed some things that need to be killed that some people wanted to continue to do. And you can look all across the landscape of things that were being done for hundreds of years because of tradition's sake that people were just simply doing because they had to do it because that's how church was supposed to be done. And some of those things were maybe even bus ministries that died because of it. Some of it were Sunday schools and small groups that people were doing that just began to stop because it wasn't the method of today. One of the things, and cut me off at any point, but I'm just sort of rambling during COVID here. One of the things that I saw was that the IFB, the organizations that we came out of, the Independent Baptist Churches, they didn't fall in line with, they didn't like this going online. And some of the, they had to, everyone was forced to. But what I began to notice is people didn't feel like they had to quote unquote cheat on their church. Okay. If you don't go to a Sunday morning service, Brett, you use, you're in a smaller church like I am. If someone's not there on Sunday, you're going to notice they're not there. And you may send them a text on Monday. Hey, everything all right with the family? I noticed y'all weren't there. Most of them, hey, yeah, I went to my mom's church because of Mother's Day. Or, you know, Aunt so-and-so was having her family reunion. Typically, it's a pretty good reason why they weren't there. But you're going to notice they're not there. And so what happened was is in these smaller churches, people would know that they would be noticed. They weren't there, and so they didn't go and go attend other churches. Well, when COVID hit and everyone was online, there wasn't this guilt of the pastor of, well, if I don't watch him, he's not going to really know that I didn't watch him. Or I can watch enough of his sermon to know what he's going to talk about. But then they had the opportunity to switch to another church and begin to listen to, well, pastor talked about this crazy liberal church down the road the other week. I'm going to go listen to their service today. And for the first time, they had this opportunity to do this and not feel guilty about it. And they began to listen to these other people, and they began to realize, wow, this is, they're preaching the gospel. I was told they're heretics, and they're out there preaching some crazy thing. They're preaching the gospel better than my pastor is. Their worship is better than my church is. And all of a sudden, COVID began to propel people into this mindset that they could explore Christianity more than just their four squares in a box of an echo chamber. And this is what propelled a lot of things that we'll talk about at the end of the episode. But Brett, what are your thoughts during COVID died? What are your thoughts? Well, I think you're right on things dying, old traditions. And if anything, we read from the Bible, we see that Jesus cares very little for man-made tradition. Okay, he cares very, very little for that. So there are some things that needed to die, that needed to stay dead. There was some resistance to this new digital age. Listen to me. Internet's not going anywhere. Mobile phones aren't going anywhere. Online presence isn't going anywhere. Things were already trending this way before COVID. And there were people resisting. Well, what COVID did is it forced their hand. It forced their bluff. And it forced them to go into this digital realm, which is the way you're going towards. Now, I agree. Like this couple that's sitting at home eating Pop-Tarts in the bed when they're physically able to go to church. And they live across the street from the church. Now, that's wrong. That's an abuse of it. But it's not going anywhere. It's part of our worship experience now. And, you know, instead of trying to ignore it, instead of trying to get rid of it, to go back the way things were, we need to embrace it. We need to marry these two things together in person and digital. It doesn't have to be one or the other. But, you know, there were some things that died that needed to stay dead. Now, unfortunately, I will say this. There were a lot of people in our church and in most churches that use COVID as an excuse to never come back to church, even after things opened up. It's almost like they were looking for a way out of church. And COVID gave them an excuse. And they left church. And they never came back. And that especially is heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking for our church because, man, when I took that church, when I took that church, we had 12, 15 people in attendance that first year. And the church had had a bad split years before. I'm there the first year. The church, that 15 people splits again. But that was when we really got motion. That was when we really started to grow. And before COVID, we were running 70 strong. And for a church that had suffered a bad split, so bad the police had been called, that suffered a bad reputation in the community that was in, 70 was really good for that church. And I was only there a couple of years, you know, after COVID. And we never really got back to that. We never really had a chance to build that back up. Now, at my current church, I wasn't here during COVID. But from what I heard, before COVID, change was something that did not come easy here. Change was something that a lot of people were like, look, this is tradition. This is the way we've always done things. We're not going to change it. We've always had a Sunday night service. We've always done this. We've always done this. Well, COVID comes along, and now the church had to change. And so now change comes easier. And now the church is open to change. And it's still open to change today. That was a positive change that happened was they're more open to change. We just recently dropped the Sunday night service. We're doing small groups. We're flexible in other areas. So, you know, I would say that there are more positive outcomes than negative incomes. One of the things that we dropped, and we talked about it earlier a little bit, me and you've talked about it, is the offering plates, passing of the offering plates. This is something that many churches did drop because of COVID germs. Some churches have went back to it. Some churches have stayed with the offering box, and we, both the churches that I've been affiliated with since COVID have both opted to stay with the offering box, and it works. But there are some churches that have noticed that not passing the plates, the offerings have went down. And so I don't think it's something where you have to do it certain ways. It's not a, you know, you have to look at this at a church by church basis. It just depends on where you are. It's not a blanket thing. It may be bad for other churches and good for other churches. But I think what COVID did is it forced us to be flexible. It pushed us out of our comfort zone because, you know, that's what God does. God pushes us out of the box. He pushes us out of our comfort zone. And I think for years that, you know, we were all church the way it used to be, church in the 1950s. And God has come along and said, well, let me take care of that golden calf that you're holding up, that golden calf of 1950s church. And let me go ahead and push that out of the way. And God, I honestly believe this, that God said, I'm going to force you to do this. This is digital media. Listen, years before, people went to church where they grew up in their community because they couldn't travel far. Well, then the automobile came along and now people can travel far. They can, you know, travel at, you know, some people travel an hour to go to church on Sunday morning. But now the advent of social media and online worship, you can virtually attend any church in the world. And I think it shouldn't replace in-person worship at all. But if we don't incorporate it, we're going to be obsolete, obscure, and left behind. Absolutely. I think incorporation as well. And I pulled up the stat that I found. I was trying to pull it up beforehand. I searched just now and probably found it. But it was a statistic that LifeWay did. And it said that 41% of Protestant churches prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, so prior to the fall of 2019, 41% were not putting any of their worship services online. 41%. It said by the end of March of 2020, of that same group of churches that they researched, 9 out of 10, so 90% of those 41% of churches were putting some type of video content online throughout the pandemic. And it said that 84% of those churches, so 6% less of those churches are still streaming something online today, whether it's at the moment of recording live or whether it's pre-done and then posted later. And so 84% are still doing some type of service online since COVID. And it said this, that one in every four people in our churches today, 26% is because they watched a service online first and then they came to church. So 25%, 26% of the visitors that we get in our churches are because they've seen something online and now they're coming to experience it in person. They may have seen something online that drove them away from your church. And so it's very important to know the content we're putting out because it is affecting people in the way they are coming. And it said that in September 21, unchurched individuals were exposed to worship services for the first time through a video post online. And now they are showing up in person. And so there's other statistics in this article. As early as 2022, three and four pastors, 75% of the pastors said their church has reached new people online in the last six months. And so I used all those numbers to say this. It's a tool. It's something that we can use to reach new people, to reach people with the gospel, so their lives can be changed. Some things in the church post-COVID, Brett, we'll go into this now, post-COVID, that never started again or died because of COVID. For me, I've got a couple of things, and they may be different for you. I think each church context is different. If you would have asked me eight years ago, my churches and eight years as far, I mean, I would even go as far as to say, if you would have asked me five years ago, four years ago, right before COVID, what are some things that you would always have in a church? I would have told you Sunday night service will always be a part of a church of where I'm going. And for now, all of a sudden, we were doing a Sunday morning only experience, and I was doing some Wednesday night stuff. And I was like, man, I've got to have this Sunday night. And so all of a sudden, we're trying to fill some voids. But for three or four months, we didn't do anything. And then all of a sudden, we began meeting back in person, and the conversation began to happen of, are we going to start Wednesday night back? And I looked at our leadership, and I said, guys, I said, I don't have a desire to start Wednesday night back. I said, Sunday night has been some of the most fruitful times with me and my family, hanging outside, doing things together, just to experience a Sabbath together and getting away because our ministry life is busy. I said, I don't have a desire to start Sunday night back. We were having families over at our house. We were being in families' homes. I mean, for 52 weeks, when we didn't have Sunday night service, I was either in someone's home on a Sunday night or they were in my home on a Sunday night, almost every single Sunday night. Because I knew that we needed to be around people, and I knew that that was a more meaningful connection than just meeting and preaching for 30, 40 minutes and sending them home. And so we were being creative in this way, and I told them, I said, I don't have a desire to do Sunday night again. And I told the church I'm at now, I don't have a desire to do Sunday night again. Now, eventually, some of the leadership pushed and said, well, we're going to start it back. We got a new pastor, and they really pushed him, and they started back a first and third Sunday night. But they're not doing it regularly. I mean, they're not doing it every Sunday night, but they're doing it twice a month. And, you know, it's whatever it is. But for me, that was one of the things that died that I didn't know needed to die for the sake of my family. And my family grew so much closer during that time because of these relationships that we began to build. And then I've got one more that I'm going to share, but I'm going to let you talk as well, Brett, some post-COVID things. Well, you know, I covered a couple things already post-COVID with the, you know, the offering and things like that. I do want to say it's about Sunday nights. We didn't have Sunday nights at our church. I've talked about this before as part of our testimony. And that was just it was a rest. It was a Sabbath to have that just kind of relief after coming out of the IFB and having that time with my family. It really made a difference. So I can definitely sympathize with you because that time with my family was some of the best time that we ever had. I think that a Wednesday, like a full one of the things that we changed here at this church was like a full Wednesday preaching service. We don't have that anymore. We've changed that. It's no longer a full, you know, full blown preaching service on Wednesday. Now we have a meal where we feed the community. We open it up for everybody to come and eat, even if you don't come to our church. Then we come over here and we do we do. A devotion, we do a prayer meeting if we have choir practice on Wednesday nights because we drop there. So now here at Rocky Point, we did recently drop our Sunday night service. And of course, that didn't happen. You know, when they came out of COVID, they said, OK, do we want to start Sunday night service back? They said yes. So they started Sunday night services back. And when I took this church, it was full on preaching Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night. Full on three preaching services. But because the attitude that had come out of COVID was, OK, we're OK with change. When I suggested, OK, on Sunday nights, instead of doing a full preaching service, let's do small groups instead. They said yes. When I suggested on Wednesday nights, OK, instead of having a full preaching service, let's have a community meal. And, you know, I'll have a little study, little devotion 15, 20 minutes after the meal. They said yes. So they they're saying yes is to all these changes. And that's an attitude that did come out of COVID. And so I think those changes are positive. Absolutely. I agree with you. One of the things and I sort of hinted to it a minute ago with COVID was that these churches, people began to use this as an opportunity to look at other churches online that they would have not normally looked at online. And I thought I really think John started this podcast, the For Freedom podcast, out of a response of COVID as well. We had extra time on our hands. We had time where we weren't ministering as much because we couldn't go in hospitals. We couldn't go in. And so we're trying to as pastors, we're content driven. We're we're preaching people that we're that's just who we are. That's how God made us. And so we're trying to figure out these areas to get these avenues out. And so it began for John as a as a book deal. He wanted to write a book on the history of the IFB and go through it. And so instead he said, well, man, it's going to take too long. Let me just get this content out. So we started the podcast to help him start it along that exact same time. The RFP podcast came out. The Preacher Boys podcast came out. There were some others along that same genre because it was a mode of getting content about what was going on in people's lives. And I truly believe, Brett, that the the exposure to the sex abuse, the exposure to the legalism and the spiritual abuse that those three podcasts that specifically mentioned came out of covid was a direct response of covid. And people seen for the first time. I mean, on social media, it turned to bad preacher clips and IFB sermon clips. That was a response to everyone's online. Let's put content out there to expose what's going on in these churches. And pastors were getting mad. There were there were death threats to the IFB sermon clips. I met the guy. I know him. He has shared with me the death threats that he had been getting. He showed me screenshots because of these pastors that were mad at him for taking his own work, their own words and putting their own content out there. And what we began to see is I don't know if you experience this where you're at, but I began to see covid change the even content that these IFB churches were putting out. Because all of a sudden they began to put private YouTube pages up where you had to be a member and have a password to get to it. Well, any church is trying to hide that stuff. I mean, they've got to be hiding something. They've got to be hiding what they're trying to teach. And they don't. So all of a sudden there was even this this mechanism that was beginning to show up in the churches itself of saying, yeah, we were trying to hide things, but they didn't say it that way. And so I think covid exposed a lot of those things. But I think for me personally, man, it exposed some imbalances in my ministry, in my life, because I was so ministry focused. Yeah, I had my Fridays off, but my Sundays were so busy in my and I'm not saying they shouldn't be. But in the same time, man, we've got to have time for our family on those days off and community. I preached this past Sunday. God created community for a reason, because he knew we needed to be around people. He knew that we needed to express ourself around people. And that's why he created that community for us, which is the church, which is why we're talking about in the church and how covid changed it and how we can take some of these things that we've learned and go forward. Brett, anything there? And then we'll sort of Brett wrote an article, an article, a research paper for a college class just last year about this time. He's going to share a thought on that. Anything before that thought, Brett? I did want to say just on top of, you know, listening to online stuff and podcasts during covid. All right. So here's the thing. People in our circle and the recovering fundamentalist X funding community, they know me as the tick tock guy. OK, I am the tick tock guy. And all that came. Yeah, you didn't know. I thought you had a hidden identity. So that all came out of covid, too, because here's what was going on. Facebook was so depressing. I mean, they're posting the death numbers, the death totals every single day. Those numbers go up and up and up and up. And it was so depressing that I took a hiatus from Facebook and I started looking for something else. I'm like I got off Facebook for like two months, which was a peaceful two months. And I started looking for something else and I found tick tock and I got into tick tock during covid. And, you know, I know a lot of people found the recovering fundamentalist podcast during that time. I knew about it right before covid hit, but I really took the time to listen a lot during covid. And, you know, and I think God has a reason for everything that he does. And I think that, you know, many, many churches are holding on to tradition, totally going against online stuff or forced to go online. And we'll talk about that in just a second. But, you know, I got into this thing because of covid. And, you know, that's part of my story as well. Love it. Brett, why don't you share the the thought that you gave there at the end of your paper on the method of how we how we receive things and how covid has affected that. So, you know. Religion should never shy away from an in-person event. But what covid taught us is that, you know, religious organizations, they should invest in social media, online worship, digital solutions. Their churches today that they they criticize so much. You know, they're so, you know, traditional. They criticize so much Facebook and live streaming and whatnot and things such as that. But here's the thing. There's always been a need to overcome geographical distance and physical absence when it comes to, you know, preaching the word of God. And when you however you fix that geographical distance, however, you fix that physical absence, you're going to use the technology that is available to you at that time. I want people to think about the New Testament. What is the New Testament? The New Testament is sermons written in letter form. That's all it is. They're sermons written as letters. Paul is in one location. He wants to write a letter to another. He wants to preach a sermon to another church in another location. So he writes a letter and he sends that letter to this church far away. He sends this sermon through the medium of a letter to another church in a distance, far distance away. In fact, for thousands of years, the need for religious ideas to traverse space and time has always played a role in religion. And there have been many mediums that have been used to communicate sermons, communicate spiritual truths. And he looks today. Today, it's digital platforms. It's social media. But 2000 years ago, it was letters being sent to the church. Before that, Moses wrote down the Jewish law on tablets of stone. You know, and even even Muhammad. He he dictated the Koran to scribes on parchment. And so this need to can, you know, to transfer spiritual ideas has changed over time. The medium, the message stays the same, but the medium changes. OK, so so the mediums change, but the methods deny did not. And so, you know, today it's it's the same method. It's just a different medium instead of writing letters or writing on parchment or or, you know, tapping out a message on stone. We're sending sermons through electronic medium to somebody else. So I think people just need to think about, you know, before they criticize watching a sermon online, they need to think about their New Testament, how it's just a sermon that Paul sent using a letter over a vast distance. And I see it as the same thing. I love it. One of the things that me and Brett were talking about before we got on here was a book I read while I was in college. And I've never forgotten this statement. The statement is methods make methods are many and principles are few. Methods may change, but principles never do. It's in a book called concentric circles of concerns. And when we think really through this, this thought that our methods of reaching people are going to change all the time. You know, if you'd asked me eight years ago, hey, would would you be clipping out part of your sermon and doing a 60 second to a 90 second clip of your sermon and putting it on a social media, real Instagram, whatever it may be to reach people? And I said, heck, no, that's dumb. Why would I do that? But now what do you see? People are constantly doom strolling, scrolling reels and tick tocks because that's the mode of how people are getting things. And so I'm getting that because I want someone to to hear that and to hear a a word of encouragement that I gave on a Sunday and say, I need more of that. And allow that to drive more people into the house of the Lord to come and to hear what God has for them. And so methods are many and principles are few. The doctrine is going to stay the same. They're not going to change. There's not a whole lot of doctrines that are not going to change. But the way we get them out should change over time. I was talking to Brett a little bit about this. I said, you know, back in the 17, 1800s, the Methodist church was growing. They were thriving. They were doing things that no other churches were doing. The Sunday school was invented. And these ways that they were reaching people were phenomenal. Horseback riding preachers that were going around and preaching circuits and and preaching in different churches were phenomenal. And they were doing things that that the church was doing to grow so great. And now in these last years, they've allowed methods to take over and they've dropped all the principles and the methods have taken over. And now we see the collapse of the modern Methodist church and and what they're doing. But we see even in the independent fundamental Baptist world where, man, they came on the scene in the 1900s and they began to even promote Sunday school more and even promote bus ministry more. And the churches grew and people were reached and souls were saved. And my life was changed through it. But we got stuck in the methods and we said we can't change these things. These are the doctrines. And all of a sudden that was killing the church. And now, even today, we've got to look, we've got to say, OK, what can I do with the modes that God has given me in today's day and age? The Apostle Paul didn't have Internet. Jesus didn't have FaceTime, but we do. And so how are we going to use it to reach the next generation that's searching for truth, the searching for answers that we have? And how are we going to get it to them? You know. Online worship's not going anywhere. The Internet's not going anywhere. Mobile phones aren't going anywhere. Listen, when people when people wake up today, the first thing they grab is their phone. The last thing they put down at the end of the day when they go to sleep is their phone. It's it's a total culture shift. It is the way it is. And for religion and houses of worship to ignore it is to fade off into obscurity. And if we want to stay relevant to the people that we're trying to reach, we're going to have to embrace digital media because it is most definitely the future of faith. So most definitely love it. All right. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this today. We've got just a couple more episodes left. We've got two more episodes after this that we'll be bringing to you. And hopefully you will join us in Indiana and for the sake of the gospel in Israel. And until next time to God. Not the pastor. Be the glory. Found my new name. Found that good grace. Found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning. Has no ending. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. 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 on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast. For Freedom Podcast.

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