The Silent Holocron

We regale you today with a Classic Silent Holocron posting from December 2005. I still think this is one of the funniest things I’ve posted on the entire blog. Enjoy!

Condiments?

Well, it all started when Tricia and I went to O’Charley’s for dinner Sunday night. I was in a reflective frame of mind, and I was explaining the doctrine of predestination. Actually, I was trying to explain the doctrine of reprobation, but realized I wasn’t getting anywhere because she didn’t understand predestination. Anyway, I was getting nowhere fast because this is too wordy a discussion for her, I couldn’t keep giving her verbal examples because she was getting lost quickly. And when she gets lost, she gets frustrated. I looked around the table, and in a flash of inspiration, I grabbed all the condiments I could: butter cups (or pats of butter, if you prefer), ketchup, salt, shrimp sauce, and my sweet tea.

Yes, I was a smidgen desperate.

But I successfully explained total depravity, irresistible grace, and predestination to her in one fell swoop, using the condiments as examples. The ketchup, butter, and salt represented humans; the shrimp sauce represented the Holy Spirit, my sweet tea represented Jesus; and I played the role of the Father.

Can you imagine how this conversation went?

Stephen: “Okay, Tricia, now see this stuff? I the high and mighty Balderdash do in my godly power choose the pats of butter, out of all the condiments, to be my people for ever. I send my Son, the Sweet Tea, to die for them that all who believe in me may be saved. I sent the Holy Shrimp Sauce to those whom I have chosen to remove the sin that blocks them from obeying me and doing my will, so that they are now free to choose my Sweet Tea. I send another of my pats of butter who are already saved to witness to them, and because they have been made free because of the sacrifice of the Sweet Tea by the power of the Holy Shrimp Sauce, they can willingly choose to accept the Sweet Tea as their savior and obey and follow me. See that ketchup over there? Because I did not choose him, I am sending him to the unholy garbage pit, where he will rot in a landfill for all eternity. Got it?”

Tricia: “I think so. You chose the butter because butter makes everything better, and you didn’t choose the ketchup because ketchup and butter don’t mix well.”

Okay, this wasn’t the real conversation, honest.

Stephen’s Note: Stephen is dealing with writer’s block. Until he has taken a lightsaber to it, he is reposting classic offerings from the ‘Cron. Enjoy!

FBC Starbucks (4)

Okay. It’s now time to examine that all-important objection: “What if I miss church to evangelize?”

I’d like to start by first getting my obvious skepticism out of the way. I take this assertion with a grain of salt. Were you really evangelizing? Some of the people who’ve used this excuse with me revealed that in reality they just wanted to hang out with their non-Christian friends at some community event. They wanted to be “a Christian influence” at that event. Yeah, right. The really sad thing is that such a perspective was endorsed by certain people who ought to know better.

I want to approach this by looking at two separate incidents in Scripture. The first is the Great Commission. You can use either Matthew 28:16-20 or Mark 16:14-20 as your text for this. Either one does the job that we need on this point. I’m going to use Matthew here since some of the scholars among us will no doubt tut-tut about how the ending of Mark is disputed.

¹⁶Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (ESV)

All right. Look at the order of things here.

First, the disciples gathered together. That sounds strangely like the Body of Christ going to church. We meet together with our fellow disciples. Second, the disciples worshipped Jesus. Yes, I know, it says that some doubted. If you go over to the parallel narrative in Mark, you’ll see that Jesus at that point rebukes the doubters for their unbelief. Is that not what happens, or ought to happen, in church? There is a time of worship, and then when the Word of God is spoken, unbelief is rebuked. Third, once they have worshipped the Lord, the Lord commands them to go and spread that worship.

What is the principle being taught here? It is one that took me two years to formulate. Once I formulated it, I started reading John Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad! and found out he’d already put the principle I’d discovered into print. That principle was simple:

Missions is not the purpose of the church. Worship is.

And that is why, throughout this post, I am asserting that if you purposely miss church to evangelize, you have sinned.

Don’t misunderstand my sentiments, here. I want to be wrong about this. It rebels against every human sense of decency and honoring of God that I have. It rebels against every sense of missionary call I have as a pastor specifically and as a believer in general. But the undeniable conclusion that I have reached, and Piper affirmed, is that we have made evangelism an idol.

We have become a church that puts more emphasis on our ability to reproduce ourselves through evangelism than on our ability to produce spiritual health in those who are already believers. The result of that? Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of false converts in our churches. In the Southern Baptist Convention alone, we boast 16 million members in our churches. 16 million. But surprisingly there are only 6 million people attending our churches on any given Sunday. What happened to the other 10 million? They aren’t all on vacation like me. They aren’t all sick. They aren’t all working on Sundays. The only reasonable conclusion that can be reached is that we have at least 10 million lost people on our church membership rolls.

And what that ought to tell you is that evangelism is bankrupt if there is no worship behind it. That’s right. Evangelism is totally worthless if there is nothing for a convert to “plug into.” Our energies ought to first and foremost be focused on worshipping the Lord before we can even begin to pray about any possible evangelism we could do. We need to be committed to faithfully attending the local church of which we are a member before we do evangelism.

That means we are obligated to show up on Sundays and Wednesdays. The health of the Body of Christ supersedes the health of the lost. Listen — the lost are dead men walking, anyway. They are zombies. They are good for absolutely nothing but satisfying the wrath of God (see Romans 9:19-24). You and I can do nothing to change that status. It will take an act of God. So calm down.

On the other hand, you and I are alive and in need of nourishment and sustenance. We are born-again believers, and that means we have been made alive in Christ. Dead people do not need nourishment. Living people do. That means our number-one priority is to worship the Lord above all else. Not even evangelism has the right to trump that priority. We must worship the Lord before we can ever hope to evangelize. Our next text illustrates that vividly. Let’s look at Acts 2:1-11.

¹When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. ⁴And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. ⁵Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. ⁶And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. ⁷And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? ⁹Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, ¹¹both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians–we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” (ESV)

Notice what happens here. The church is gathered together, ostensibly for the purposes of being the church. All of a sudden, Jesus is there, through the Holy Spirit, and He empowers the church. What does the church do as a result of the empowering they have received in worship? They go out and evangelize.

I am convinced that failure to do just this is the reason why we see so much failure in personal and corporate evangelism. We have bought into the lie that the top duty of the Christian is to witness. As a result, when an opportunity for witness presents itself, we willingly forsake meeting with our churches, a direct violation of Hebrews 10:25. We run headlong into evangelism with no power behind it. There is no fuel in our words. No authority driving our witness. Evangelism is something that happens as a result of corporate worship, not in lieu (instead) of it.

The pattern of Scripture is that (1) the church comes together for corporate worship, (2) the church is empowered for the Great Commission as a result of worship, and (3) individual Christians then go about fulfilling the Great Commission, some with spectacular results.

So the next time you tell me you missed church because you were witnessing, you need to apologize, not to me, but to the church you have willingly forsaken. Apologize, not to me, but to God for thinking that lost people are more important than giving Him glory in worship. Nothing and no one is more important than God, and the minute you lose sight of that, you have sinned.

All this to answer whether or not meeting a “Christian friend” at Starbucks or Heine Bros. Coffee constitutes “being the church.” As you can hopefully see throughout these posts on FBC Starbucks, the answer is a flat and unequivocal “no.” Please direct any further objections to the meta, and I’ll try to answer them as they appear.

Stephen’s Note:  Stephen is dealing with writer’s block.  As such he is reposting classic offerings from the Silent Holocron.

FBC Starbucks (3a)

Before we get into the next objection, I want to backtrack and give you an addendum to the last post. I had wholly forgotten this one; in fact, it is one of the more common objections I have gotten. In “younger SBC-ers” circles today, it is likely the most common reason given for leaving SBC churches. That objection?

What if I have problems with the church leadership?

Okay, let’s flesh that objection out, attempting to answer it as we go along. Let’s start by asking the question, what kind of problems are you having with the leadership of your church? Here are some potential ways of saying this:

I don’t go to church on Sunday/Wednesday because I don’t like the pastor. Okay. Fair enough. Let me probe a little bit: Do you divorce your spouse because you don’t like him/her anymore? Do you now see the uselessness of your objection? “But Steve,” you object further, “I’m not married to the church!” Of course you aren’t. You were never a part of the church in the first place; you were only dating the church. That church will be much better off without you than with you. You are nothing more than chaff. You are a goat. The church is for wheat and sheep. You are neither; you are deadwood that must be cut loose. I question the integrity of your testimony if this is the kind of attitude you have about the Body of Christ.

You see, when we become believers, we became “married” to Christ. We play out this “marriage” in the local church. The pastor, though he be a sheep, represents Christ to the congregation. The congregation, in submitting themselves to his teaching, is obligated to remain faithful to that pastor. If you have problems with your spouse, you will bear through and work them out, would you not? You would not divorce him/her. In the same manner, if you have problems with your church leadership, you should be just as committed to resolving them. To behave otherwise is sin, sin against the church generally and sin against the pastor specifically. Ultimately, you are sinning against Christ. The fact that many of you have this problem speaks volumes as to how flippantly you treat being a church member.

I don’t go to church because I have been hurt by the pastor. Okay, also a fair question. Let me probe once again: Do you divorce your spouse because he/she hurt you? This is also another useless objection. In a marriage, when one spouse hurts the other, the offended spouse ought to call the other to repentance and seek reconciliation. By refusing to do this you have, in effect, sinned a greater sin. You have “let the sun go down on your anger.” Instead of resolving the hurt and reconciling, you have allowed it to take root as bitterness. That is a dangerous thing to have in a church. Anger, fear, aggression: the dark side are they.

I am assuming here the kind of “hurt” you have experienced is not of the criminal kind, of course. I don’t mean things that you perceive as “sin” against you (addressed in the next paragraph) but actually are not. I’m talking about things like hurt feelings, bruised egos, squashed pride. Be honest with yourselves and examine your “hurt” to determine if you are guilty of these or something similar. If a pastor tiptoed through the tulips, he’d never change anyone’s life with the Gospel. Sometimes one must utterly squash the flowers before hearts of stone are transformed into hearts of flesh.

I don’t go to church because the pastor sinned against me. Now, this is a much, much more legitimate and serious objection. These are the kind of objections that ought to be taken seriously, especially by pastors. But again, I must ask: Do you divorce your spouse because he/she sinned against you? It is here that the church member has any legitimate standing.

At first glance, the answer is no. Just because my wife sins against me does not give me carte blanche, that is, full permission, to divorce her. She could call me every dirty name in the book purposely, or intentionally be snarky with me, or usurp my authority in our marriage, and I still wouldn’t have any excuse to divorce her. The only reason I would divorce her then, according to Christ, is because of the hardness of my own heart, not hers. By this same token, sin against you by a pastor is not an authorization to leave your church.

At second glance, however, the believer is given legitimate means of resolving this conflict, and both of the previous objections. We must follow Matthew 18. That is, the believer must first confront the offender privately. If that fails, the believer must tell the situation to at least two others so that it may be documented and proven, then take those fellows and confront the offender again. If that fails, then the entire affair must be presented to the church for official discipline. If even that fails, the offender is to be treated as if they were an unrepentant sinner and an unbeliever.

The first two situations above are more likely than not going to be corrected during steps 1 or 2, especially if they are nothing more than misunderstandings, personality clashes, hurt feelings, squashed pride, or bruised egos. But those first two situations are never an excuse not to attend church. The 3rd one, by contrast, is more serious and more biblical. If, after having been through steps one and two, a pastor does not repent of or even acknowledge his sin, stage 3 of the process has him in danger of losing his job. No pastor of any sort of integrity would allow documented, proven, unrepented sin to endanger his ministry. If he does, your church has every authority under heaven to expel him from his position. Why? Because your pastor, by his refusal, has trampled the Gospel underfoot. He has made the Gospel “of no account” in his attitude and in his life.

So you see, a case of sin by a pastor is not legitimate reason to leave your church. Quite the contrary. Sin by a pastor is the call for a congregation to exercise their Biblical authority to keep their pastors accountable. If you fail to hold the pastor accountable by leaving the church, you are sinning a greater sin than your pastor did. In doing this, you are also making the Gospel of no account in attitude and life.

This brings me to a second part of this third objection:

I don’t go to church because the pastor is preaching heresy. This is the most serious charge of all. It is the congregation’s responsibility to make sure their pastor is preaching no other Gospel than the one once and for all delivered to the saints. Let me ask my question once again: Do you divorce your spouse because he/she has been unfaithful? According to Christ, the answer is “yes, you may.” But notice here, Christ never says “go ahead.” He simply says it is “permissible.” That is an astounding permission. If God “permits” something, that ought to indicate that the thing He is permitting is not His ideal. It is still ungodly. But God will permit it. If Tricia ever cheats on me or I on her (God forbid and protect us from such temptation!), we are permitted to divorce, but God would much rather that we remain faithful to each other. Why? Because God remained faithful to His spouse (Israel and later the Church) despite repeated infidelity. Instead of forsaking Israel and the Church, God worked diligently to restore her. That is true commitment.

So, if your pastor is clearly preaching heresy, you are permitted to leave, but it is clear that God does not want you to leave your church. You would be better advised to follow the process outlined in Matthew 18. If your pastor repents, you have gained a faithful pastor. If not, your church should show him the Left Foot of Fellowship. Give him the boot. If you decide, instead, to leave, you are still doing something not very good or right or godly, but God will permit it. The Lord would much rather you stayed and worked to restore the broken relationship.

But what if even the church refuses to correct an erring pastor? Well, then, you have two options. The first is to examine yourself carefully against Scripture to determine if, in fact, the pastor is erring. You yourself may be in the wrong. But after doing so, and asking people to whom you are accountable, and even after having things “explained” to you by the pastor and the church, you are still convinced you have not erred, you have no other choice but to leave that church and not look back. That church has trampled the Gospel, and you would only be pierced to the heart by the continuing heresy promoted by that church.

As an example, let me give you one of Mr. Frank Turk’s illustrations of this (roughly recalled, of course). Suppose I caught my pastor engaged in something we’ll just say is unbiblical with another man’s wife. Not only that, I have video evidence. I confront the pastor and this woman, and they laugh it off and tell me it’s nothing. Astounded, I go to two godly and trustworthy men in church, and present them the evidence. Agreeing, the three of us confront the pastor and this woman. Again, they laugh it off and tell us it’s nothing. Astounded, we bring the issue before the church. After deliberation, the church itself laughs it off and tells us it is nothing. Furthermore, they call on us to repent and reconcile with the pastor and this woman. I am fully justified in shaking the dust off my feet, leaving that den of iniquity, and never looking back, because that church has trampled the Gospel of Christ underfoot. This is the kind of thing I am talking about. My ducks are in a row, and yet the Gospel is still made of no account.

I did not address above what constitutes heresy, because there are some out there who would say such moronic things like (for example) “speaking in tongues is heresy,” or “advocating Christian liberty in drinking is heresy,” or even something infinitesimally stupid as “Calvinism is heresy.” Heresy isn’t in the eye of the beholder, as most of those who claim heresy over things that are Scriptural seem to think. Heresy is a belief that rejects orthodox tenets of a religion. Speaking in tongues, alcohol consumption, and Calvinism do not reject orthodox Christian tenets. Heresy speaks to the very heart of what it means to be a Christian. So if you think your pastor is preaching “heresy,” you better have your ducks in a row. Make sure what you are objecting to directly impacts the Gospel.

I hope I have impressed upon you the seriousness of such an action as leaving the church. Leaving your church is not a matter to be handled lightly, for frivolous reasons. It is a serious fracturing of the Body of Christ that should only happen under the most serious and dire of circumstances. Tomorrow, we will address the objection, “What if I miss church to evangelize?”

Stephen’s Note: Due to a bout of writer’s block, Stephen is reposting classic Silent Holocron posts for the time being. Enjoy!

FBC Starbucks (3)

I said we’d take a look at Matthew 18:20. So with no further ado:

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. (ESV)

At first glance, this would seem to close the case and give certain people the right to declare me a stinkin’ legalist. Where two or more people are gathered in the name of Jesus, He is there. If I sit down and have a prayer with my wife, Jesus is there. If I meet one of my church members for a time of sharing and prayer, Jesus is there. According to the people mentioned in the first post in this series, that constitutes “being the church.” But does it really?

No, it doesn’t. And to show you just how it doesn’t, let’s look at the context of the verse:

¹⁵If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. ¹⁶But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. ¹⁷If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. ¹⁸Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. ¹⁹Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. ²⁰For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. (ESV)

Do you see where I am going? Okay, so you might not. Let’s walk through this one.

First, the context of verse 20 is set by verses 15-17. That context is church discipline. Church discipline, according to this block of text, is something that is very personal, individual; and at the same time it is corporate. Notice how church discipline begins: personally. The offended Christian is expected to resolve the issue personally. I would even say such an issue is to be handled quietly and discreetly. None of this loud bullfighting we Southern Baptists are famous for. None of this loud gossip-mongering we Deaf people are famous for. Church discipline begins in a quiet, discreet, and totally non-corporate way. And that is as it should be: if Moses couldn’t handle dealing with the daily grumblings of Israelite against Israelite, what makes you think your pastor can handle yours?

Second, it is clear that Christ is present explicitly when His people are gathered for the purpose of being the church. The context makes that glaringly clear. Church discipline does not take place in a vacuum, folks. It takes place as a stated function of the Body of Christ. Some would have us believe Christ is present only when church discipline is occurring, since that is the thrust of the text here. Technically, they may be right. However, practically I think they are wrong. Christ is present when the church has come together to perform churchly functions, and as such Christ is present when your church meets on Sundays and Wednesdays.

When you meet a Christian friend at Heine Brothers’ Coffee for prayer or fellowship in lieu of attending Sunday worship or Wednesday prayer, Christ is not present in the same way in which He is present at your church at that moment. You are not being the church. Why? Because you have violated Hebrews 10:25. You have willingly set aside the established worship time of your local church that, by virtue of membership, you have agreed to be in submission to. You have told your church that worshipping with them is not important. Worse, you have told Jesus that you don’t think much of being a part of His body. And so you don’t forget, that’s called sin.

Listen, there are reasons we tell people “I’ll meet with you before/after church.” One is that corporate worship is essential to our spiritual health. A non-believer isn’t going to understand that, nor will he respect it. And that’s to be expected — the Bible says a non-believer thinks God’s things are stupid. A believer who doesn’t respect that is guilty of sin against God and His church. A believer, quite frankly, ought to know better. That’s where a believer is going to get the prayer and encouragement he/she needs. That’s where a believer is going to be fed by the Word. That’s where the believer is going to learn the Gospel in order to share it with the non-believer. And to forsake all that is not a very bright move.

Another reason is one that I’ve hinted at, and will now bring into glaring relief: we are in submission to our local church. Some of you really aren’t going to like me after reading that. So be it; have fun being a pseudo-church of one or two or three. But let’s broaden the context of Matthew 18 again: directly before our passage in verses 10-14 we have a “lost sheep” parable. Let’s think about the concept of us being sheep. As sheep, who is in charge? The sheep? Um, no. Shepherds in that day actually led their flocks instead of herding the flock from the rear willy-nilly, if cultural historians are to be believed. The shepherds led, the sheep were expected to follow. Wayward sheep were quickly brought back into line.

Most of the time, we look at this passage and think about all the ways a pastor is supposed to minister to his sheep — think of the hours of relationship building it takes for a shepherd to lead the flock instead of herding it from behind. And there’s a lot to be said for that angle in exegesis. But if we look at the fuller picture, we see sheep that have submitted themselves to the shepherd. And the shepherd cares for those who have done so, even to the point of leaving the rest when one goes astray.

But when you as a sheep refuse to submit to the shepherd and meet with the rest of your flock, you’re in sin. You’re fracturing the Body of Christ. You’re depriving the Body of a hand, or an eye, or a foot, or an ear. When you joined your local church, you in principle agreed to submit yourself to them. You agreed to meet when they met, worship with them when they worshipped, pray with them when they prayed together. You agreed that the needs of the Body were greater than the needs of the one. Yet you are making your desires a greater priority than that of the Body of Christ. In other words, you’re being a selfish, self-righteous lout.

Who gave you the right to determine you didn’t have to meet when the whole Body was getting together? Who said it was okay for you to go somewhere else when Jesus was assembling his various body parts? I’d like to see you explain to Jesus why you, as His middle finger, decided to stand up to Him in a Starbucks instead of being glorified on His hand.

I say these words with a certain amount of “preaching at self” — there were times in my life where I was just as guilty. And it is because of those times that I can confidently say what I’ve said here this morning — I deprived myself of the benefits of submission to my local church and contributed to its fracturing. All of my profs at Southern have repeatedly emphasized that being “healthy” includes involvement in worship at a local church, not getting up and watching Charles Stanley or the seminary chapel or chatting and praying in the seminary cafe — all of which, by the way, I have done in the past. And look where that got me — burnout and a couple of extra years of seminary education. And the irony of it is that I know better than that. I was a seminary student, for crying out loud. I should have kicked my behind out of bed on Sundays and gotten in a local church. I should have put away the books on Wednesdays and gone to prayer meeting.

So, you see, just meeting a friend at Starbucks doesn’t meet the criteria of “being the church,” because you’re not really there for the purpose of being the church. So let’s stop pretending that is “corporate” worship. Let’s start calling it what it really is — rebellion, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Let’s start actually being the Body by meeting with the rest of that Body at the times set by that Body.

Stephen’s Note:I’ve got writer’s block!

I can’t finish the divorce post. I can’t get motivated to blog the rest of my T4G reflections. I can’t even get started blogging the Puritan Challenge stuff I’m behind on! And I’d really like to blame it on the Wells review, which is the best review I’ve ever written (why the heck couldn’t I have written like that while I was in seminary?!?!?), but I can’t. I’m just…stuck.

So in lieu of a regular post, I’m going to follow the lead of some of the giants of the blogosphere these days and repost some “classic” posts from The Silent Holocron. Over 4th of July weekend I’ll be reposting the ones that got me in trouble last year: the FBC Starbucks series. We’ll start with part 2, the first real post in the series. Enjoy!

First Baptist of Starbucks (2)

To recap, I said in this post:

Read in the blogosphere after returning home from work this morning:

“He thinks meeting a Christian friend at $tarbuck$ is just as valid “worship” as attending the Body of Christ.”

To which I briefly responded:

I was posed with this assertion a month or so ago by a member of my church. Said member was challenging my teaching in discipleship class that it is wrong for us to pass up our church’s established worship and prayer times for reasons other than illness or work. Starbucks was changed to Heine Brothers Coffee. And my answer was a flat and unequivocal “Heck no.” Just meeting someone at the Heinie is no more “worship and prayer time” than reading this blog is, even though I tend to preach at ya from time to time.

I’m going to start off my approach to this topic by asking a simple question: “What is the church?” If you answered, the universal body of believers, also known as the “invisible” church, you’d be right and you’d be wrong. You’d be right because we are all the Body of Christ. You’d be wrong because we’re talking about the local church.

So let’s nuance that question. “What is the local church?” The answer is also simple — it is the local body of believers. But we’d still be wrong to a degree, because not every believer goes to the same church. So what we are really talking about here is the church of which one is a member. With me so far? Good; now let’s nuance that question one more time:

“What is the local church of which one is a member?” Now we’ve asked the right question. I argue the answer is the local body of believers that has agreed to meet at a certain location at certain times for the purposes of being the church, to which one has submitted oneself to. In other words, the local church is that congregation in which you practice being “of the Body.” This is true whether you are Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Pentecostal, or Catholic. Everyone belongs to a local church whether they admit it or not, whether they appear on a membership roll or not.

Now I am not, in my denial of the above quoted assertion, saying that churches who meet in Starbucks are not being the Body, as an astute commenter pointed out in the last post. Quite the opposite. I’ve actually established that a church meeting in Starbucks — or a movie theater, or a high school gym, or even in a bar that has light beer and Guinness on tap — is a real live church. For the sake of those who will no doubt want to nit-pick my ecclesiology, I’m assuming these places have the marks of a true church.

What I am denying, quite frankly, is that two or more Christians meeting in a bar (be it Starbucks, Heine Brothers Coffee, or the local Irish pub) for anything other than “being the church” constitutes worship. This denial raises a whole host of questions (and I’m sure others will get raised in the meta, if a meta even starts), which I intend to tackle in this mini-series. The very first objection (which is ironic because I almost always open prayers with this very thing) is the affirmation in Matthew 18 that “wherever two or more are together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” We’ll critically examine this Scripture, and I’ll even explain why I use this Scripture so often during prayer at church.