“Church Without Buildings, Pastors, or Worship Services? (First Century Reality)”

[0:00] Almost nothing is more important to our understanding of the scriptures than how the Bible itself uses the words on its pages. And if you've been around my channel for 5 minutes, you'll know that I am a broken record on this point. How we understand the concept of the soul, how we understand the spirit, how we understand heavens and earth and how we understand the language about hell and the language about eternity and all of these different things. The actual words the Bible uses are central to this discussion. In every single one of these instances, what the Bible actually says is determined for us by how the Bible uses the words that are on its pages. And of course, another area about which I'm very passionate is this concept of what the church is and what the gatherings are and what Christians do when they gather and can it rightly be called this or that. And how do we talk about pastors and teachers and shepherds

[0:48] and evangelists and overseers and elders and all of these different pieces and worship even worship? How do we talk about worship? I believe that these things affect every single one of us as believers. What exactly is church supposed to be? I had the privilege today of sitting down with Dr. Tom Wadsworth. His videos have gotten over 800,000 views in hundreds of countries, and he's been studying this for 50 years, studying how the New Testament talks about the church and what it really says about Christian gatherings. He, like me, has a penchant for opening up the scriptures and finding the exact things that are going to make you the most controversial person in your friend group. In fact, what he discovered when he went and started studying this got him labeled as a heretic in his very first year of ministry, which is something I can certainly relate to. But

[1:35] as you'll hear, his findings come directly from the understanding of the Greek text and the original context into which the New Testament was written. Of course, behind the scenes, this conversation was particularly meaningful for me because it connects with the main theme of this channel, The Overlap Life, which is all about how heaven and earth are meant to overlap in Jesus himself, both in eternity and in our present reality today. And the way that we understand church affects everything about how we live out our faith as a community. I found myself nodding along quite frequently during this conversation, feeling that sweet sense of relief that comes when someone's articulating something that you've been trying to find the right way to express yourself. If you have ever felt disconnected during a Sunday worship service or wondered why your expression of the church that you attend doesn't

[2:24] really seem to match up 100% with what you're reading in your scriptures, then this episode is probably exactly what you need. So, without further delay, here is my conversation with Dr. Tom Wadssworth. Well, Dr. Tom Wodssworth, what an absolute pre pleasure it is for me to have you on the channel today. There's so much for us to talk about and so little time. I really just want to dive right in. How are you doing today? I'm doing great and uh appreciate uh your invitation to talk here today. Let's see what we've got here. Yeah, we've whole cans of worms that uh would probably take four or five episodes to really unpack, but I'm happy to start with just a a wonderful high level fly over. So, um I would love to know you have a reputation in the space

[3:12] now which is it's given to this sort of study around what the early church actually looked like. What did their practice look like? What was the purpose of their gatherings? How did all of these things come to be? And it's it's gotten you a lot of attention, positive attention quite a bit from people who uh go through and do the same research themselves and come to similar conclusions. And it's also gotten you quite a bit of push back. And you know, some of it might not be all good faith argumentation, let's just say. But my first question is really, what on earth led you to talking about this stuff and studying this stuff in the first place? Where did this all come from? Yeah, it came from a sermon I was preaching in 1977. Good grief. Long time ago, almost 50 years ago, but I was in my first year

[4:03] in full-time pulpit ministry and preaching through First Corinthians and I came to First Corinthians 14. I was tempted to skip over the passage because it deals with the speaking in tongues so much and my church didn't do that and it was very controversial topic at the time. But I thought there must be something here. After all, this is the the longest chapter in the Bible that deals with the Christian assembly. And uh we ought to be able to listen to what's going on here. So studying the thing in Greek, which I was trained to do, I noticed a particular Greek word popping up time and again here seven times in this one chapter, oo do which means edification or to build up one another. That idea seven times. And he Paul comes to this big concluding statement in verse 26 where he says what

[4:52] then brethren when you come together let all things be done for edification. Hm. And it hit me all of a sudden. Why didn't he say, "Let all things be done for the worship of God," which is how my church would have approached it, which is how Catholics would have approached it, which is how Lutheran and all Protestants and just about everybody in the planet. We all have our houses of worship and our hours of worship and our order of worship and that all this worship stuff, but yet Mhm. it's not there. Paul says, "Everything you do should be done for edification." And so that began a big long study from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22, even in preparation for that one sermon to look up the word worship every time it's found. Uh, and

[5:42] then also look at the the Greek words behind it and the Hebrew words behind it. And oh man, this is a massive study. And then I realized that this principle is actually true that our language about the assembly of worship services and worship pastors and opening with worship and all opening worship with prayer all is all foreign to the New Testament. Let me say that again. It it is foreign language to a New Testament Christian. They would say, "What in the world are you people doing? What is wrong with you?" uh not as though that they're against praising God. They certainly are, but the language of worship is is something different than that in the New Testament. So, that's where I came upon it. And

[6:30] um it was a controversial sermon when I first preached it. I was summarily declared a false teacher and a heretic. Thank you very much. Um but here I am struck also in my first year in ministry with being labeled a heretic. doesn't bode well for long-term career possibilities there, you know. I Yeah, I thought you drew up the play. No, it isn't. So, uh, but so the so the the topic stuck in my mind uh permanently and is still even here here today. And to to skip forward about 50 years in 2016 after I had gotten out of the ministry years ago uh and got involved in the corporate world in marketing and such, but this this topic

[7:19] didn't let me go. And I continued to teach and to speak in different churches all along. But in 2016, I decided I'm close to retirement. I'm gonna go back to school and I'm going to pursue a PhD in this topic and I'm gonna take all these radical conclusions that I've come to that came purely out of the Bible and throw them up against a PhD wall and see what sticks and uh spent six years then in in seminary again the second time around uh and writing several papers on it and then finally my PhD dissertation I started work on that in 2019 finished it in 2022 and uh then I decided to take my show on the road. You know, I said I can't keep quiet about this anymore.

[8:08] This is too significant, too revolutionary really. It it upends everything. It turns church on its head as you've already recognized. Uh in a good way, too, because if you're just following along with the conclusions here, it's all good. It's all good for us. It's good for the church. it's good for the the for the future. Uh but yet some people really take umbrage at the whole idea. And you know the word worship gets to be a u a focal point of the contention uh because it sounds awful like uh I must be Satan himself to be opposing worship. How can you do such a thing? Well, but they don't understand exactly what we're doing there. But I'm just trying to be biblical. That's

[8:54] basically it. him. That's it. And this is the most interesting thing for me because there are a few ministers, Bible teachers, people that I know um or whose work I have consumed who all sort of approach certain problems from the same angle. And it's it's not a a discussion around well, what did the church say in the years following the publication of the the scriptures or the completion of the canon or however you parse that out. It's they don't necessarily care so much about well this was what Augustine said this is what Aquinus said this is what Anselm said and those things are you know valuable as far as they go in terms of this is a person's perspective but there there's a small group of teachers brave enough I would say candidly brave enough to just be alone

[9:43] with their Old Testament Hebrew and some Aramaic and their New Testament Greek text and trying really honestly earnestly The project being to ignore the debates of today or even for the last,500 almost 2,000 years and to simply look at the text itself in its original context and interpret it based on its own how it seems to be presenting itself to be understood. And you're one of those. And I can tell you that my way into this church discussion was kind of a backdoor where the first word that I chose to really go deep on when I was trying to adopt this way of thinking was actually the Hebrew word for soul which is nephesh. And if you ask your average rank and file Christian what the soul is, they all have a a image in mind. And that image is something of a well it's

[10:33] the you know it's it's the real me. It's the non-material part of me that lives on in heaven or hell forever after I die. And so then when I found that the first occurrence of that word on the pages of scripture does not describe the immaterial essence of a human, but the physical body of a fish, I knew I was in deep trouble. I just knew I was into absolute uh I was in way over my head because, you know, you get to Genesis 1, God creates the waters and says, "Let the waters team with living nephesh." And it's it's whole groups of fish swimming around in the water that God created in the Genesis account. So this way of thinking, every word suddenly was just imbued with so much meaning and so much nuance and so much that I had to go and try to unpack and dig through and sift through and figure out how did we

[11:22] get so jumbled up and twisted up and how did how did we get so far a field from what the scriptures are actually seeming to say? And so then this discussion led me inevitably to the New Testament where I'm looking at like you said there's there's this word worship that we use that uh that if we were to look for the Greek equivalent would be that prouneo right that's the word we're looking for and it simply means to prostrate oneself right or to bow down face down to the ground in adoration of someone and and that word is conspicuously absent in lots of discussions in in all relevant passages that have anything to do with the activity of the gathering, the activity of the body of Christ when it gathers. This is a discussion around what I call terminological precision where we want

[12:10] to make sure that the words that we're using are biblically informed, contextualized, right? The cont they're informed by the context. Because how many people I don't know I could soapbox about this all day, but how many people do we know that have gotten way off course because they came to the text with certain presuppositions around what a word must mean or that a word in our ears and the way that we parse it and the way that we understand it needs to have that same meaning coming into the text not knowing that they're performing is Jesus maybe even fully convinced that they're performing exesus that they're coming to the text itself and they're understanding it for what it's saying when they've unwittingly filtered it through thousands of years of strange terms and debates that took us far a field from what the text originally said. And so this I think that this is the thing that's led to so much controversy around

[12:58] your work is that when they hear you say the word worship does not describe the activity of the gatherings, they hear you to be saying there's no Godword dimension at all to the gatherings of the church. Right? They they hear you saying, which is not what you're saying, but they're hearing you say, "There is therefore no godword posture of gratitude and a desire to serve him with every second of your life." That's what they think because of their definition of worship, but they're misunderstanding you because you're being precise terminologically with what the word worship means and where it actually occurs on the pages of the New Testament. Sorry, that was a lot. and I just sort of word vomited out. But I I want to surface this really early on in the conversation because I know people hear your name who are unable to hear

[13:46] what you're saying because of their own presuppositions. So I just dumped out a lot and we have other questions that we're going to get to, but I want to surface this first to talk about it. How does this whole terminological precision idea come across in terms of what you've studied and how important is it to be very precise in the words that we use and have them be informed by the text itself? It's a massive issue and and I didn't appreciate how huge it was until I really started to get deep into my dissertation. Then I realized this is even bigger than I thought it was. The terminological precision issue and here's maybe a quick way to look at this. We are now 2,000 years away from the early church. 2,000 years. We're also thousands and thousands of miles away from where it happened. We're also

[14:36] many, many different languages that have evolved and changed over time. Think of all the governmental changes, the cultural, the way people live, they think, what they do has all changed and shifted. It becomes if we really want to understand what they were doing in the first century in Athens or Jerusalem or Antioch, we really need to put on our first century glasses and not our 20th century glasses. But that's what we've done, especially with the word worship. I even find that it's it's not productive to use the word worship in the context of trying to figure out what first century Christian assemblies were

[15:25] all about because it starts the modern mind cannot comprehend. We need to talk with terminological precision using the language that they used like they had gatherings. They came together. They built up one another. All this stuff is going on. And the word worship doesn't appear in any of these settings of of gatherings and and that includes and but when you say the word worship uh people should be asking but nobody is. They should be asking, "Do you mean procanao worship or do you mean latao worship or do you mean later ghetto worship or are you talking about tha maybe you're talking about seomi worship which one of those Tom are you talking about?" Well,

[16:14] that question needs to be asked and we need to ferret that out. And as it turns out, all those five Greek words, which are all translated as worship in one place or another in the New Testament, none of them are used in reference to what Christians did in their gatherings. So, it becomes complex and confusing. I get it. But let's just wipe our minds clean. Pretend we know nothing about first century gatherings and let's go into Matthew 1:1 and start reading through it. And anytime we see a reference to a Christian assembly, let's pull that information out. And then till we get to Revelation 22, verse 20 or whatever the last verse of the Bible is, then we've got an idea of what the first century gatherings were like. And lo and

[17:03] behold, you won't even be talking about this English word worship. It doesn't even enter the discussion biblically. I'm starting to get biblically speaking because I think that this is what we need again. So again, people will hear that and then think, how can it be that Christians don't worship God when they gather? This is the way that I think about this. And there may be a point of disagreement. I'm happy to talk about this if it comes up, but the the way that I think about this is that people say, well, when you gather, is it to worship God? And what they mean by worship is give him this godward orientation of praise and a desire to serve him in everything and in gratitude for how he has rescued and redeemed you when you didn't deserve it. Right? Uh that's what they mean by worship. I I think that that's not the way that the

[17:52] New Testament uses the word necessarily, right? Or the way that the Bible uses the word. And again, when we say the word, which of the four or five different Greek root words are we talking about? Um, but I think that people often get astray on this discussion because they think they they have a distinction between edifying others and worshiping God and serving God when really the idea of rendering your life in service to God every second of it is going to include in large part intentional edification of the brethren who also make up Christ's body around you. Right? It's it's not a matter of either or. It's a it's a yes and. But even still, the word worship isn't isn't the right word for this. Right? But edification of the brethren

[18:41] is something that God looks upon and smiles upon and says, "Yes, my children are doing what they were meant to do." Yeah. So if we want to do what God wants us to do when we gather together, let's listen to what the the messages are in our New Testament as to what we ought to be doing so that God would be pleased with our gathering. And what he wants us to be doing is to be concerned about one another, building up one another, making one another stronger, more mature, more spiritual, more compassionate, more loving instead of, you know, if we just get together all the time and let's just praise God. Okay, that's fine. That's what you want to do. You're just not going to be much changed at the end of all that. Uh, you will have gotten God really good and woripped, but so what?

[19:32] What now? Uh yeah, but if your life is filled with uh an obligation to do what God wants, you ought to listen to what he says on this issue of what we should be doing when we get together as well. He wants us to be building up one another. That's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, again, you just pull your average sort of rank and file modern western Protestant Christian and you ask them to describe their church experience and it's going to be they drive to a building on a Sunday morning and they park their car and they walk inside and they have five 10 to 15 second conversations on the way to their seat with people where they make half-hearted promises to pray for one another and make ask half-hearted questions about

[20:19] how they're doing and get half-hearted answers. They sit in a pew and stare at the back of another guy's head for two hours while a bunch of people stand on the stage and sing. And then one guy, usually almost always a guy, comes and and talks. Whether it's worth anything or not is a different discussion, right? But he'll talk and then they'll all file out of their seats, have a few more half-hearted conversations on their way to the parking lot, get in their car, and drive home. And if you just start Matthew 1 and you and you get to Revelation 22 and you just take your entire New Testament and you shake it upside down, you won't find anything that even allows the possibility of the Christian life containing an event like that and saying, "Didn't we just do exactly what we're supposed to do today? Did didn't the didn't the Lord just like you said, just get real worshiped today? There's

[21:08] nothing like it." So what the question now becomes, all right, if we've got our open Bibles and we're willing to be honest with the text, we're willing to willing to look into the Greek and even to look at the Old Testament context for some of these things and where some of these ideas originated in the in the people of in the community of the people of God. What did the first century church look like? And why is it so different from the Old Testament structure of what God's people seemed to do? There's there's there's a disjoint there for some people as well. But if we're looking at our New Testament, what did the first century church actually look like? And what are the distinctions and differences between that and what the Old Testament people of God seem to do together? Yeah. All right. Good. There's there's really kind of two questions there. Let's What did it look like? Well, the topic is summarized in

[21:59] one word. Looked like a home. H O M E. And it was a home. uh most of the early church gatherings were house churches and this is explicitly identified frequently in the New Testament that they're gathering in homes and so if you want to get a feel for what that was like think about a bunch of Christians sitting around in somebody's house probably in the living room where else you going to go right or some sort of larger room where more people could be handled and they're looking at each other in the eye or they're not in rows and rows of pews all for to the end of the the living room where somebody's standing up on a platform all dressed in robes and a tall hat and swinging. This doesn't make any sense at all. It's a house gathering,

[22:47] okay? It's very organic. It's very familial that they're calling each other's brothers and sisters. Uh there's probably a meal cooking in the kitchen at the same time. uh they they did do meal prep in these homes and they broke bread together frequently in these houses as we know from scripture. So and what Paul says they were there to build up one another. Yeah. They would pray. Yeah. They probably praise God in either verbally or in songs as well. But generally the the lion share of the content is teaching is exhorting. It's encouraging, building one another up, even admonishing, maybe some rebuking, maybe some correction going on, but it's

[23:35] all uh we're here for one another. And that's another one of the words that works well to describe first century assemblies, and that's one another. It's a particular Greek word alone and it's used a hundred times in the New Testament and it re it mentions so many different kinds of one anotherings that take place with Christians when they get together. They encourage one another. They pray for one another. They comfort one another. They forgive one another. It goes on and on and on. They confess their sins to one another. My goodness, all these one anotherings throughout, not just Paul. Peter gets into it. John gets into it. Jame could they're all Jesus gets into it. My goodness, want another ringing. But where can you do that when you walk into this beautiful sanctuary with these tall spires and

[24:23] these color stained glass windows and everybody just shut up and sit down and listen. Okay. Mhm. We wipe that smip that smile off your face. We behave ourselves in the house of God. Yeah. No smiling and certainly no laughter. So, so this this one really I think highlights it for me and it's it's the one anothers of course again you tell people that the phrase one another occurs 100 times in the New Testament and it's something like 58 distinct variations of what the one anothers are supposed to look like right and then my favorite example is actually forgive one another because in that whole scenario we just painted earlier of a person going in and sitting down in a pew and staring at the back of another guy's head for two hours where is anybody going to be close enough to another person that their real self is going to

[25:12] come through. They're going to make a boneheaded error. They're going to say something they shouldn't have said. They're going to offend one another, unfortunately, to to where we're close enough in life that we're going to actually step on each other's toes every once in a while and need to forgive one another. That's never going to happen in the the, you know, institutional setup there. Your rank and file Christian is never going to find themselves in a scenario where in their relationship with other people in that scenario and in that event that they're going to sin against a person that they need to forgive or be forgiven by, right? That's just never going to happen. But outside of the four walls of that thing, whatever it is, the life that they live and the way that they treat other people and the kind of relationships that they have and the way that they discuss things and the way that they move forward, that need to forgive one

[26:00] another, it's going to arise all the time. So, if that's supposed to describe the life of the church and we're calling this thing church, we've already mixed up our terms. This can't be the church then. Because if the church is where we're one anothering one another, then here it's just an event that gets put on on a Sunday. We're not gathering together for mutual edification. We're not gathering together for encouraging and exhorting and rebuking and correcting and praying for and confessing our sins. Those things just don't happen here. And so I I don't even think we should call that thing the church. I just don't think it's the right term. It doesn't it doesn't describe it. It's a it's a building. It's an event. It's a movement. It's a denomination. And those are all things that are not the church. So we know a little bit more about what the first century church looks like. Then it involves like you said home. And the

[26:47] dominant the dominant metaphor for the relationships of the people who fill that home are brothers and sisters. Uh elders and younger ones, right? You got uh the older women are supposed to teach the younger women, right? the older the older men are supposed to be, you know, you don't accept uh a charge levied against an older man unless you got some witnesses to back up what was said, right? These are the terms that are used. It's also relational. So, it's you got home, you got relationships, you got family, and these are the terms we're dealing with. That's the New Testament. And I I again I I challenge anybody to go find a passage, not a quote from someone else or not some other scholar who says otherwise, but a passage of scripture that goes against that dominant set of metaphors of home, family, relationships, mutual edification as being the activity and

[27:35] structure of the church. Yeah. But some people will point to the Old Testament and say, well, it doesn't really seem like it's what's going on back there. You know, they have their synagogues and they have their temple services and all this stuff. So my next question I guess is why the difference there? Why the distinction between what is clearly just irrefutable I think from the pages of scripture in the New Testament describing the life of God's people compared with some of what was going on in the Old Testament in terms of these you know temple services and priestly activity. What's the difference there and why is there a development? Great question. And the first question I summarized with the word home. The second question, I think I could answer it with one word again, but it has six letters and that's the word temple. Yes. Uh the Oh man. In the Old

[28:27] Testament, the Jewish nation in Hebrew uh religion, uh the temple was the center and it was the viewed as the dwelling place of God on earth. That very phrase is found frequently throughout the Old Testament. It's called the house of God. It is it's the place where God resides. And throughout the Old Testament, there are several thus sayaeth the Lords about that you must go there and do several things. And usually I like to to focus on Deuteronomy 16:16 because this verse blew my mind when I first found this. Uh it says, "Every male Jew is to go to the temple three times a year." Yes. you know not every Lord's day uh every week I mean rather three times a year during these

[29:14] feasts that's when it would uh he would go there and he'd do two things is to present himself to the Lord and the only way you can do that is by prostrating yourself that's where procelo comes in that and then the second thing you do is you cannot come empty-handed according to Deuteronomy 16 and that's where the Greek word latu or latrea comes in this is offering of sacrifice Um, so those are the two fundamental things that Jews did when they came as soon as they came into the temple complex. First thing you got to do is prostrate yourself before your God because he is perceived as being there and then you offer your gift and then you can leave. The the idea that they went well then they had their church services then right? Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Um, remember that the temple

[30:03] complex is this massive thing, but also remember that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of Jews coming from all over the world to go to this one place, not all these church buildings and all these street corners. No, one place that has no roof, by the way, where all these people are gathering and there's no pews. I mean, there's no pool pit. Uh we just have anacronistically jammed all these things back into that because Old Testament worship has come now into New Testament worship and we are continuing what they come. This is baloney. Yeah, we made this up. That's right. And so the point is here uh why is it so different? And then the the the temple's gone.

[30:54] Jesus Yes. extensively predicted the destruction, not one stone left upon another, of the temple. Mark chapter 13, Matthew 24, Luke 17, Luke 21, John chapter 2, all these different places. It's talking extensively about the destruction of the temple. It's going away. It's a it's a huge major seismic shift in what's happening theologically with God's people at this time. Believe me, first century Christians got it. We don't get it because we've rebuilt the temple and we still have all these little temples on all these street corners now that we call the house of God. And you got to be careful when you walk in there and tiptoe in God's house and uh all this this we've resurrected

[31:44] temple terminology to apply to our gatherings. And that's what worship is. The word worship is temple terminology in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. We resurrected that and jammed it into what we're doing. We never should have been doing that in the first place. Why? Because the New Testament doesn't do it. I'm getting worked up here. I got to go take some medication. Hey, I'll pick up right where you left off. Okay. I I couldn't agree more. I think that one of the things that's so frustrating to me in this discussion is how frequently a person's perspective is on the other side of hundreds or even thousands of years of argumentation giving an apologetic for a certain shape of church service looking backwards through that at the New Testament rather than looking

[32:32] scripturally. Let's start from Genesis 1 where the introduction of the idea of God dwelling with humanity and dwelling with the world that he made and called good starts the very p first pages of scripture and then there's the fall which separates God and humanity and then you get God and all of his plans to start to kind of bring heaven and earth back together again. That's kind of the central theme of my channel is the discussion around Genesis 1 and 2, Revelation 21 and 22. You see a lot of parallels there. And what God created us for in the beginning is what he's destined us for in the end. And those things being the bookends of the story inform everything that's in between. So the story doesn't start with a building. The story starts with God relating face to face with humans. And the story ends with God relating face to face with humans. And there's no need of the

[33:19] temple in that second context because God is dwelling fully with humanity again. So it's the development of these themes. You have God with humanity and then you get into the Old Testament and he created this uh the tabernacle. The first person on the pages of scripture who's ever filled with God's spirit. It's in Exodus 20 uh or somewhere in Exodus. Might not be Exodus 20. Don't quote me on that. But it's uh it's Betsel and he's filled with God's spirit specifically to give him wisdom to go and build the tabernacle. And the way that it's designed is it's supposed to look like the Garden of Eden again, right? The artistry on the walls, the trees, the fruit. It's supposed to make you feel like you're going back to that heaven on earth overlap space. And then the temple is just a more permanent version of that. So then you get to the New Testament and yeah, you get to the Olivet discourse and you get to all of the different pronouncements of Jesus

[34:06] that ah it's, you know, that thing's coming down. No stone's going to be left on top of another. He does not seem to have the highest opinion of that thing. He has a high opinion for what it represents, which is the place of God and humankind relating again. But he doesn't seem to locate that in a building anymore. He doesn't seem to say that the temple mount, the place there is going to be the way that this program continues to operate. He seems to say that he's the temple. And when he gets torn down, he says, "You can tear down this temple and I'll rebuild it in three days." He's now claiming to be the place where heaven and earth connect, where God and his people meet. He himself is that place. And so then when we place our faith in him, it seems to me that the way the New Testament takes these ideas of temple and priest and sacrifice

[34:54] is it redefineses them all in and through Jesus. And so if Jesus is the temple and we in him are being built up into a temple of the Lord together, and if we are a royal priesthood, all of us in Christ, and if we're supposed to give our lives as a living sacrifice, like it says in Romans 12:1 1 and 2, it seems to me that all of those things now have to be separated from and reunderstood if we're going to do justice to the biblical text, old and new testaments, and the development of those themes. Seems to me we need to recognize that there's been a hard right turn in the story where we're no longer supposed to be looking at a building and a priest or a class of priests who are kind of a separate category from the rest of the people of God. We're now all priests. We

[35:43] all form together the temple of God. And it's all defined redefined in relational terms. And it just bothers me that so many people they they have an idea of what the church looks like that's based on our context which itself is thousands of years removed from the con the context of the New Testament having gone through all these mutations and we're looking backwards through all these layers of stuff to get to the New Testament and then we're backfilling our opinions and our context and our thoughts and our cultural millu into the text without letting the text speak for itself anymore and we're doing violence to what the developments of those themes were. So, like I said, I'm getting fired up now, too. Well, let me piggyback on that. And this is what I hear even top theologians doing uh with regard to trying to

[36:31] justify what we do today. They're doing exactly that. Exactly that. They're trying to justify everything. They're taking everything we do today and assuming that it's right. and then they go back and try to find a verse here and verse here that kind of sort of supports the idea that we're doing that. Stop that. I mean, that doesn't do any good. Let's go back and start with the text of scripture and let it speak to us as to what's going on there instead of trying to justify everything we're doing. It's just going to lead you down the wrong path. The problem with that is an assumption that what we're doing is right because nobody wants to think what they're doing is wrong. Of course, why don't we trust God? Don't we trust his word? Isn't it sufficient? I mean, there's just a ton of stuff there in scripture that can instruct us on this,

[37:20] but we've been uh ignoring it or twisting it for for generations upon generations. Exactly. So, so let's kind of backpedal a little bit. We we've talked a little bit about why worship is not the correct terminology for the activity of the church's gatherings. talked about the fact that word just does not appear in any of the relevant passages that describe the gatherings of the church that describe the activity of the people of God when they gather together. What you do have is like as you said allelon you have the one another phrase hundred times impossible to miss and then when the scriptures especially when a specific passage repeats itself seven times as in the case of the oo do the building up of the brethren anytime the passage is repeating itself not even if it just says the same word twice you're supposed

[38:09] to have your radar up to pay attention to this is a point of emphasis in this passage but if it appears Seven times also. Okay. Not just not six, not eight, seven. Seven is extremely important number for all Jewish literature and all sort of uh Jewish worldview. It's a it's this number of completion. It's something that denotes God's activity. If the phrase of oo do shows up seven times in that passage, your radar should be blaring that this is important mission critical. So I I I there's a million directions we could take this, but this just is the biblical data. It just is. So when people hear you say that and they hear me say something similar, because I've said similar things on my channel

[38:56] before, when they hear us say that, they hear, "Oh, you're saying that there is no Godword dimension in the life of the church." as though the only thing that is happening when the church gathers is that we're aimed at each other and God isn't involved at all. We're like a social club. We're like a country club of Christians gathering together and and you know the the whole God thing. We sort of check that at the door and we're just focused on each other and God can wait. That's what they're hearing when we say you and I say that the proc does not happen that those different phrases worship does not happen in the gathering. But I don't think we would agree with that. Right? There's obviously a Godword dimension. So, how would you describe in the church's gathering together and in their activity and their one anothering and their activi, you know, what they do and what

[39:43] they spend their time on and and and what their life is spent on together. Not just when they gather, but when they disperse and then go live their lives as believers, what is the nature of that Godword orientation of their life? If it's not worship, what is it? Yeah. Okay. Well, again, let's start with scripture. Let's start there and let's see if we can answer that question. Uh let's let's let's look at 1 Corinthians 14. Now here's again the longest chapter in the Bible that deals specifically with the issue of what you do when you gather together. And there praying is mentioned that's a Godword activity. Uh praising God is singing is mentioned there. That's a Godword activity or it can also be a horizontal activity as well. But in both those cases and Paul says specifically in 1 Corinthians 14 verse

[40:33] 15 161 17 18 right there in that section he talks about praying and singing he says these two are done to build up one another because if you pray in a tongue nobody benefits nobody is edified. uh said that that Godword thing that you're doing, however noble it may be that oh my goodness, he's praying to God. Let's all bow down and think, well, what baloney, I don't get anything out of that. I'm not benefited from that. That's Paul's point. I'm not edified by that guy speaking in another language even though he's talking to God. So, the point of that whole thing is so that we're all built up together. Colossians 3:16, a verse that's often cited with regard to uh the importance of singing in the assembly, which is correct. It

[41:21] says, "Teaching and admonishing one another as you sing, make melody with the Lord with your heart, uh with songs, songs, psalms, things, and with with the Yeah. Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Melody in your hearts to the Lord." Yes. But all that is a one another activity as well as he says flat out teaching and admonishing one another uh as you do this. So the point of all those things again is for the benefit of the body to to be talking to one another. The one anothering there is still applying to this. It's not as though God has no role in this whatsoever. He has every role in this whatsoever. But somebody would say right after I said that they well therefore we're there to worship God. Oh my. Listen, now we're back to the

[42:09] messed up terminology. Yes, we're back in this. And that word of falling face down actually does occur one time in 1 Corinthians 14. And it's describing the behavior of an unbeliever who comes into the space and comes into the gathering and recognizes, oh, godlike activity is happening in their communication and in their relationship. And if he hears the word and is convicted by it, then he will fall down and worship God. And it's a con it's a conversion event, but it's not describing the activity of the believers in that context. Yeah. It's just not. It's I think it's I think it's 1 Corinthians 14:26. Yes. Right. Verse 25. But again, it's not a believer that worships in church. It's a non-believer. But again, worship is the wrong language, the wrong word.

[42:58] That's not what proko means there. And there's evidence to support this. I quickly state part of my dissertation was that I went into all 265 times that word is used throughout the Greek Septuagent as well as the Greek New Testament to figure out what that word means in the context in which it is found. And uh I've written a paper on this you can find it on my website uh why proano does not mean worship. And I could go into that right now. There's another hour discussion there. But uh it doesn't it just doesn't. It means fall down and prostrate yourself. And that's what that non-believer was doing. He fell down on his face according to 1 Corinthians 14:24 on his face and he prostrates to God. Again, this is the

[43:46] dative in in the Greek. It's toward to God declaring that God is truly among you. Because he perceives that God is there. He feels there's only one thing to do is prosperate yourself. Yes. So utterly fascinating because again you would expect if the word meant what our modern minds and our modern ears think it means if if the word meant in the Greek what we are assuming it means. You would expect that word to show up in many other spots in this passage alone. You would expect that to be the word that would be repeated seven times. not the oo domain, not the edification language and not the one anothering being repeated hundred times in the New

[44:35] Testament. You would expect that, but it just isn't. And the data is what the data is. I think that this is another thing that is unfortunately really frustrating for me in modern western Christendom. Unfortunately, I think that we have exported this model and this worldview into other contexts so that it's infecting other parts of the world too. unfortunately with this misunderstanding of the activity of God's people in the New Testament. But I think that we hear passages like for example Jesus elucidating the greatest commandment. Okay. If the greatest commandment is a two-part, it's one commandment, but it's a two-part commandment of love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Drawing on that Deuteronomy 6 shama passage that is the calling card, the clarion call of God's people in the Old Testament. It's repeated so many

[45:24] times as the guiding principle of their life. And the second is like unto it. It's connected. And the second part of that command is to love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus himself is saying, well, you might think it's one or the other, but no, it's actually both. It actually has to be both. And if you're asking yourself, well, does the church just serve other people or does the church serve God? It's the it's the wrong question. Or if if it's the right question, the answer is yes. It's not one or the other. It's both. It's got to be both. And you reflect, you show, I think this is the the central thing Jesus is trying to say there is that you show others your love for God by how you love the people who bear his image,

[46:12] right? Whether they're whether they're saved or unsaved. But of course, starting with the people you share a body with, right? If you're both part of the body of Christ, the way that you treat another believer is a way you show the the surrounding world your love for God, but you also show your love for others and your commitment to loving others in your love for God. They're connected. They're inseparable, in fact. So, if that's the case in the greatest commandment, why in the world would we expect that it would look differently in the church? That it would look differently in the way that the church operates, God's people operate in the New Testament. It seems to me that all of this is oriented. So the Godword dimension is not limited to the gathering. It's included in the gathering, right? But it's not using this worship terminology. It's it's whole life service and sacrifice. It's whole life every second gratitude to God

[47:03] and a ringing yourself out for the benefit of others, for building up others. And it's just it's beautiful when you come to see it, but our terms get in the way of us being able to understand this. Um so would we say that mutual edification which is very clearly over and over shown to be the purpose of the gathering and grateful service to God what most people think of when they say worship but that's not what the term means. Are those connected in the gathering specifically and then are they connected in other dimensions of the Christian life as well? Well, I think uh there's there's they're inseparable probably. Uh mutual edification is certainly the goal. Paul just says when you come together, let all things be done or for or edification. So there just no escaping that. Yeah. Uh yeah.

[47:53] And but then the other thing where the godward dimension comes in to play here is it's also with one of these worship words and that's Latrea uh and Romans 12:1 where Paul there says uh I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your reasonable Well, some translations say worship and that's the Greek word lraa there which does mean the offering of a sacrifice. The point is our bodies are now we respond to the sacrifice of Jesus for us for our sins with our own life as a sacrifice

[48:42] back to God offering our bodies as a living sacrifice. day to day in time doesn't stop where you continue to do that. Um yeah, people want to describe therefore I'm worshiping God 24/7. Well well you know all right but that's just confusing things but uh the idea is that we're offering our bodies as a living sacrifice. And this is Latrea. This is where in the Old Testament, Latraa would have been used to refer to offering a bull and a goat on the altar and splattering its blood there, its life there as a sacrifice to God. But we do now do the same thing with our own lives in the way we live our lives in a holy and acceptable way uh to God. So that's

[49:30] how Yes. But what does that have to do with the assembly? Well, that's well, it's yeah, sort of. It's all there. But the the purpose of the gathering, according to Paul, is to build up one another so that we can be better at doing all that stuff. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, now we're at the nub of it. We're at the the crux of the thing that I think is the most exciting development in this entire discussion is how we we touched on it a little bit earlier, but the way that these themes percolate. The way that these themes sort of, you know, Paul Paul knows what he's doing. He knows his Old Testament inside and out. when he came face to face with the risen Lord on the donkey on the road to to Damascus and he gets knocked off of his donkey and has this incredible encounter. I think it's Galatians says he spends three years in Arabia, right? He spends three years. I

[50:19] think what he's doing in this period of time is he met with some of the apostles, right? He met some with some of the 12 and he's recategorizing everything that he thought he knew from the Old Testament story in light of Jesus, in light of who Jesus is. And then it's Paul. Paul is the one more I would say principally, right? He's written twothirds of our New Testament for goodness sake. So I think it's Paul principally he knows all this inside and out. He's writing the the letters of the New Testament, we would say, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The the spirit is working with Paul to communicate a message that's going to be mutually beneficial and going to be edifying to those who read it. And what we see in this de development of the story, like you were pointing out, Romans 12:1 and2, it's it screams at me in these terms because you have all of y'all's bodies, right? It's a plural

[51:09] bodies as a living sacrifice. It's a singular sacrifice, right? And and that all takes place in the community. This is all happening inside the context of community where the people gathered, but really even if they're not gathered for a gathering of mutual edification, they nevertheless are still forming the body of Christ together. And what they're described as doing is giving a living sacrifice. He knows he's pulling on these old themes where the shape of sacrifice in the Old Testament was an animal giving its life to create a holy space, right? or to create a uh you know this gets into whole all kinds of discussions around atonement or you know that's two two or three hours of discussion uh probably decades of study

[51:59] on its own right but he's pulling on all of these things. He's pulling on all these ideas but he does not in any way infer or seem to tell us that what we ought to be looking forward to is the reconstruction of another physical temple and then to return back to that to offer animals again. Well, you know, we we were all priests for a while, but eventually God's going to return to having just the one priest, you know, operate the whole temple system there. He's very clearly pulling on these terms and demonstrating by how he's using these terms that they've all been redefined in Jesus and they've all been redefined in his life and they've all been redefined in terms of this is now the the means by which God is going to bring his reconciliation project to a completion and then that goes on into eternity. But I think that's the smoking gun. The smoking gun for me is whenever Paul uses those terms that are very

[52:49] explicitly pulling from Old Testament themes and imagery about temple priest sacrifice even the gathering right you talk about the gathering of the 12 tribes whenever they were together that was called the gathering and the septuagent would have used the word eklesia to describe that gathering but all of them have been redefined in Jesus and I think that this is the thing that if I could get one idea formed fully in the mind of every person who approaches this subject in this way, it would be that it all once again is centered on Jesus. It it it is all running through Jesus now as the temple. Now we as the royal priesthood, him as the great high priest, us together giving our bodies as a living sacrifice in service to God every second of the day, every area of our life. If I could just get one set of ideas, it'd be those. And let me

[53:37] piggyback on that, please. I get one more thing there that that's in this whole reinterpretation is and this is fundamental is understanding that God does not dwell in a temple anymore. He now dwells in this temple. That's another redefinition taking place with the word temple. It's no longer this holy building located on one place on the planet. It's you. It's within us individually as of course collectively as a corporate body as well. But God now dwells here. Jesus is called Emmanuel, which means God with us. He is with us. And since God is now in us in the same way that the temple was holy, now we are holy. And so Paul then when he writes to

[54:26] all the Christians through all these letters, he calls them the saints, the holy ones, the hagi. The holy ones. This is the hagi. Yes. How could they be? And they're holy. Why are they holy? because God dwells in them. Thus the the absolute requirement for them to live holy lives and righteous lives and to respect one another because God dwells in all of them corporately as well either. Division should never be contemplated in the the holy body of Christ. Uh, so all the more reason why when we get together, we need to be building up one another and and respecting the body of Christ as it is and being compassionate and understanding and forgiving of one another. Yeah. Wow. Okay, we're at a point now. We're about an hour into this

[55:16] thing. I just feel as if there are about a hundred different directions we could continue to go with this, right? Because what we've done is this is a shot across the bow to every expression of church that is at work today in my context is United States. I'll be merciful in limiting us to that context alone. Uh you know modern 21st century United States. If we have when I say redefined I I don't mean that we have created a new definition. We're returning in a lot of ways to the original definition. In many senses, what we're doing today is a redefinition of church. What you and I are trying to do is restore the original definition of church of worship. And again, there's this terminological precision that we're trying to have where we want to be coming to the New Testament. We don't want to be, as Tim

[56:04] Mackey says, Tim Mackey is one of my f Bible scholars. Tim Mackey describes what we usually do when we come to our Bible as essentially being like the American who gets on a plane and flies over to a foreign country, promptly drops his phrase book in the nearest trash can and asks in English to the nearest person where the McDonald's is. We don't want to be that person when we come to the New Testament. We're coming to the New Testament. We want to hear it on its own terms and we want to understand the original ideas we want to have in the words of Michael Heiser, an ancient first century Israelite or an ancient person in our mind as the constraining sort of interpretive grid. So you and I are trying to return to these original definitions. It's a shot across the bow to pretty much everything that we're doing today. It has far-ranging implications on what we even understand the Christian life to be.

[56:54] What can we do if we if we've convinced some viewer? If you and I are here, we have we've laid out this case. The the themes are what they are. The terms mean what they mean. This is what the body of Christ does. This is what it looks like. This is what it means. Where can people get started trying to rethink their approach to Christian relationship and their approach to moment by moment living as a living sacrifice service to God in their moment by moment life? Where can people start to live out this different understanding? Yeah. Uh this is a common question that I get and the the answer in my mind is is clearly quite simple. Uh where do you go for this? You go to a a small group

[57:44] and I don't I don't care if it's in a house. I don't care if it's in a church building. I don't care if it's in a in a $4 billion cathedral. I I don't care. But it's need needs to be in a small group really because that's where one anothering can take place. That is where you can also participate in the process of building up other people instead of just hiring one guy to do it for everybody and probably not doing very well at it, but he's given it his best shot. So I give him that. U so so it's in the small group where this happened. Uh and that's where the first century church, the second the third century church all it was nurtured in homes. This was the incubator for uh building disciples in the first several centuries. It's then when cathedrals

[58:32] start to get built, these grand structures in the 4th century that the focus turns away from the holiness of the individual. And we go back now to a temple system where the holiness is in the holy temple of God in which we all offer our sacrifices with our priests and have our altars and all in the world. We've rebuilt Judaism all over again. Let's get back to one anothering that has to take place in a small group, but start just there. There's several other things, but start there. And even if you're going to a mega church right now, got 10,000 people, maybe have a great preacher, that's fine. But if you really want to grow, if you really want to have some sort of serious meaningful

[59:21] relationship with Jesus as well as with one another, you you got to get in a small group somewhere. And usually these big church know that big churches are aware of the of the importance of cell groups, small Bible studies, wherever it's taking place. So people are building relationships. They know that I hope. And so we need to do that as well. It's it's in the small group where the edification can take place. In the big group, not so much. Yeah. Exactly. Right. And so, man, I I want to go back to the like reconstructing Judaism. I I I would actually say the the evidence is clearer, you know, around the 3rd and fourth centuries especially that the uh there was an influx of pagan influence

[1:00:09] that took us to uh to you know, you you look at even like the the the the pagan ceremonies around worship of the sun god and it looked a heck of a lot like what we do in our churches where you did have pews and you did have a raised altar and you did have one guy sort of running the show. This was something that I studied not in any great degree of depth, certainly not I think to the level of what you've done, but this is something that it stood out to me that that sort of thing actually was the thing that reshaped the church. And then we just went back to the Old Testament for justification to look to see if we could find something similar. Yeah. But I I want to focus down on this idea of the small group. So, my wife and I, in spite of all of the agreement and all of this, what you and I are describing, my wife and I are a part of, and I I hesitate to

[1:00:58] call it a church because I don't think that's the term. It's not an appropriate term. We are part of a local institutional gathering of Christians that voluntarily gets together on a Sunday morning. And the way that we talk about that, we often have to move away from the phrase, "Oh, we're going to church. We're going to church on Sunday." Because we'll we'll go to meet the church at this place. We'll go and gather together with the church in some sense in this place. But the way that we're thinking about it, this is an event that we're voluntarily going to on a Sunday that involves teaching and involves singing and there are going to be other Christians there and and that's what we're going to do. That's not like when the author of Hebrews says to forsake not the gathering together, he's not talking about that. If we miss that, we're fine. we just missed the event on

[1:01:46] a Sunday that's got the cool music of the talented Christians coming together and making cool music and then the one person who is pretty good at teaching that we voluntarily go to. But if we miss our Wednesday night small group or in some senses if we miss family game night with my wife's family who are all believers, that feels like a much bigger blow because that's where we're getting the one anothering and we're giving the one anothering. And I come to call that the church. And I've gotten in trouble for saying I get more of what the New Testament calls the church out of my DND night with my Christian friends than I do out of the event that happens on a Sunday. So how you said small groups, but it doesn't have to be a small group that's put on by an institution of some kind, does it? It could be you Christian

[1:02:34] friends that you gather together with for the express purpose of building one another up, encouraging each other. Maybe it's not in your home. Maybe it's at a coffee shop. Those things are also instances of the gathering, aren't they? I don't know if if I just say also instances of it. It may be the the primary uh realization of it. Uh you talk to anybody. My videos have now been viewed over 800,000 times and I've received over 10,000 emails and comments and people are telling me from all over the planet. Over 110 countries have now seen this stuff and they are responding to me saying, "I get more out of that gathering I have with my friends where we have a Bible study together than I got out of going to church for 20

[1:03:21] years." Um, that's that's just where it's at. That's where people are growing. That's where people are building relationships. They're one anothering. They're developing their skills as Christians who understand and can verbalize their faith which they don't have the opportunity of doing in a typical worship service. you know. So, so I I I've I had um a conversation earlier this week with a group of people. Um just blew me away. But they had been feeling guilty about uh not going to church, but yet they were having their gatherings and they love their gatherings and and they they've learned to love one another. And the the these people blew

[1:04:10] me away at how mature they were as Christians. Uh but they were so relieved to hear that they don't need to be feeling guilty about not going into some sacred building somewhere with stained glass on it and some dude at the front. Uh what God wants us to be doing is not neglecting to meet together, but to consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, encouraging one another. That's the words that the writer uses in Hebrews 10:24 and 25. We need to be stirring up one another to love and good works and encouraging one another. You get that stuff going. You've got 99% of what you ought to be doing when you get together. Wow. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. Okay. I feel less crazy the more we talk, but I'm still

[1:04:59] I'm still sussing out some of these ideas. And so I I'll hear someone and and we're going well off script here, but uh I'll hear someone uh you know, I'll be in a conversation with someone who we're talking about these things and then they'll ask about the sacraments. Okay? So they'll they'll ask about uh for example the Lord's supper and I'll take them to 1 Corinthians 11 and I'll I'll say how does he conclude his train of thought here? Does he conclude his train of thought by saying, "So therefore, you need to, you know, take the little this I think Frank Viola calls it the savior sampler, right? You get the little the little uh thimble full of grape juice, not definitely not wine if you're Baptist, but uh you get the little thimble full of grape juice and you get the little cracker. Uh and you're supposed to just naval gaze about your own sins and and and that's does is that how he concludes the thought?" know

[1:05:46] the way he concludes the thought is look when you get together for the meal if you're going to be the kind of person who's just going to hog it all and not discern the body among you and you're not going to consider those who maybe can't afford to bring some and share and you're just going to be a glutton eat first before you come so that you're there for for edification for the building up of the rest of the body right so we talk about the sacraments how should we understand these ideas of the sacraments in restored version of what the eklesia is supposed to be doing on the pages of scripture. How do we understand the sacraments? You know, sacrament is a modern construct. Uh it's something that humans invented and used that term and threw it at some of this biblical stuff. If you want to talk

[1:06:34] about the Lord's supper, let's talk about the Lord's Supper. Let's not call it the Holy Eukarist. Let's not call uh or anything else a sacrament. What what qualifies as a sacrament? Well, what difference does it make? Uh let's just let's just uh look at the Lord's supper in the same way they looked at it in the first century. Let's not look at look at it in the same way that mom and dad did or granddad did or my my my great uncle who was a preacher. U stop that. Let's let's go to 1 Corinthians 11 as you just did. And Paul's conclusion there as a result of looking at the problems they had with the Lord's supper there as you pointed out verse 34 is therefore wait for one another. But Paul says wait for one another. Just just let's be

[1:07:23] considerate of one another. Let not go off and getting drunk as some were there at 1 Corinthians 11 and not just taking our own meal and ignoring people who had nothing. Discerning the body means discerning being compassionate about the other people around you, making sure they're taken care of. The Lord's supper is a supper. It's not a snack. It's not this little thing that we've made it into. That was another realization that I came to. The Lord's supper, the Greek word there is dapnon for supper. It's a meal. There's no way else to look at this. It's a meal, folks. It it started as a meal with the Passover thing and now it's still a meal even in the New Testament. That's why people are getting drunk at the meal or having their full meal without somebody else

[1:08:12] having anything. It's a meal and that's how they because there's enough alcoholic liquid that you could get drunk on it if you drank too much and there's enough food that you could be gorging yourself and excluding others when there's an expectation of being satiated. Yes. And the expectation is to be caring for one another, be considerate of one another, to be building up one another. That's how you discern the body of Christ. You're looking at other people in the body as being just as important, if not more important than yourself. Absolutely. So, I will say something right now that has been controversial even with people who tend to agree with you and I about the definitions of these things and about the way that we frame this stuff up. If you invite, you know, it's me and my

[1:09:00] wife, we have our two kids. All of us have placed our faith in Jesus. We're all now part of the church, right? We're part of those who form Christ's body and act as his hands and feet on the earth. We're part of the citizenry of his kingdom. Um, we have some dear friends in the neighborhood who are also believers and they've got their kids and we've got my wife's brother and sister and they're believers and we invite them all over and we're going to dig out the old card games and play a card game together. When we get together, they're going to come over to our house. We're going to prepare a meal. They'll bring something potluck style. Maybe they'll provide something. They're My sister-in-law is a really good baker, so maybe she'll make an incredible cheesecake or a t leches cake or something like that. And they'll bring it and they'll contribute that to the to the food that we're all going to eat. and we get together and we're not even necessarily explicitly

[1:09:50] gathering to edify in some specific set apart sense, but it's we love one another. We want to be around one another. We're we're there to encourage one another, to share life together, to share uh to maybe even, as Paul says, to to give our thanks to God who gives us all things richly to enjoy. And we sit down to a meal. And over the course of that meal, we are considering one another. My wife gets up and asks her brother if she can go and get something for him from the fridge. I have an espresso machine. I love to make coffees for my family, right? I just love doing this. And so our conversation naturally turns because the life of Jesus is just permeating everything that we're doing in our personal life. If it's if he's important to us in any sense, it needs to just

[1:10:37] it's not like sec sacred secular divide. every every single second of our lives in some sense is rendered to God. It's it's reckoned to God. We need to be, you know, doing everything that we're doing. So, we're having a conversation around the dinner table and, you know, I just casually bring up uh something that I read when I was in Ephesians 1 and oh my gosh, I just couldn't believe what I was reading. You know, look at what he says in his prayer at the end of Ephesians 1. And then my brother-in-law says, "Yeah, you know, I was thinking about that passage, too." and we go back and forth. We have this conversation and then we all play a game and we're all encouraging one another and we're all bearing one another's burdens and then we pack up. My family and all of our friends leave and we go to bed. Can I say that what we just enjoyed was a gathering of the church, even if it wasn't explicitly set aside, hey, let's let's set aside this time as like our Christian church gathering time where we

[1:11:26] get together for the explicit purpose of and and there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe we do some of that too, right? But can I say that what we just enjoyed when the purpose of it was simply let's get together and and share mutual relationships with each other and and nourish each other with some food and enjoy one another's company and and and open up the scriptures together. Can I call that a gathering of the church even though it wasn't purposely set aside time for gathering and doing the church thing? Can I can I say that? Yeah, absolutely. I would here's a another place where terminological precision becomes very important uh and that is the word church for example the word church you called it a gathering of the church well actually that's synonymous you just called it the same thing it's

[1:12:14] redundant uh the word in Greek for church is always it's thankfully it's just one word a bunch of words it's the word eklesia and the eklesia in the New Testament is an assembly. It's a gathering. So, if you wanted to ask me the question, can I describe what we did as a gathering? Well, of course you could. And did you I think a difference would be did you gather together specifically for the purpose of building up one another? Well, maybe you did. But that's the one thing that was special about the Christian gathering uh when they all came together uh on a regular basis whatever that regularity was uh that was to be designed to build up

[1:13:02] one another and it it's all I think you got that done anyway in your gathering right I mean you you all felt good about one another you encouraged one another you you uh you honored one another through what you said, "This is healthy and uh this is good for long-term viability as a Christian to be doing that kind of thing." Yes. Okay. So, again, feeling less crazy by the minute. This is one of those things where Yeah. it it slipped out. A gathering of the church, a gathering of the gathering. What am I saying? You know, I'm just sort of fumbling over this stuff because I'm still in the process of overwriting the programming and overwriting the terminological imprecision here. Yeah. Yeah. Can I describe a gathering of believers as a gathering of believers is

[1:13:51] almost just this ridiculously redundant question. That's it. Now you got it. And so then Paul can say also when you get together it's not for the better. you know, when he's giving them this criticism, he's saying when you gather, it's actually not for mutual edification. And this is why, and that's when he launches into his criticism around how they were conducting themselves at a meal. Yeah. Isn't that interesting that you can gather and if it's not aimed at that mutual edification is actually harmful? H So, how can we avoid harmful gatherings? that uh I think Paul has let's put two words to that to answer the question. Uh number one is love which is 1 Corinthians 13 and edification which is 1 Corinthians 14.

[1:14:40] If you can apply those two things to the gathering then you avoid getting together for the worse and not for the better. Because when they're gathering together for the better, you will be doing so with love for one another. That's 1 Corinthians 13. and to build up one another through the process. 100%. So, this leads to kind of an interesting another interesting question. Um, and now I'm just peppering you rapid fire with things that I want to hear your thoughts on. Uh but so back back in 2020 when uh however people feel about this uh I have largely negative feelings around how things were handled but uh when we were all sort of shoved indoors and we were huddling up in our own places of living and we weren't for the most part we weren't gathering publicly

[1:15:28] in these big assemblies going to the event or the concert. We weren't doing that anymore. Um, and a lot of people, there were a bunch of people who said, "Well, okay, I'll get my church fix or my church, uh, you know, and they thought that watching the concert live from their computer or whatever it would be is checking the box. It isn't." But is there a dimension of this now, 21st century, where you and I have never met in person? Uh, but I would say I've been encouraged and built up by this interaction. And when I get together with uh like say my my Patreon subscribers or when I when I talk to people, I go on someone else's live stream and we're in there explicitly trying to discuss the things of the Lord and sus out some kind of an important doctrinal stance or we're trying to

[1:16:16] encourage one another. we're praying for one another or when I do a video call with my brother who lives in Wisconsin over a thousand miles away and it's expressly for the purpose of walking him through some situation he's trying to navigate with his job and we're bringing scripture to bear on his situation. Can these things in spite of the fact that there's physical distance between us apply some of this concept of mutual edification in the gathering in some contexts? Maybe it's a diminished form, right? Maybe it's not the best version of this thing, but can we still call it an activity of the church at some form of gathering? I think so w with the recognition that we're we're missing some of the some of the better elements of the gathering like the meal. I mean

[1:17:06] there's something magical about sitting down with somebody and having dinner together going to a restaurant with somebody and eating together whether it's two people whether it's four or 40 you know there's something about that. Uh but when you and you're doing it online, um uh there's still tremendous camaraderie that can take place online. Again, I was on this other call I was on earlier a couple of days ago. There were people around the country who were on the call, but they've been doing this two or three times a week for a long period of time. You could tell these people loved one another. You could see the compassion. You could see them waiting while somebody else had their turn to talk. Uh you could see them laughing when somebody made the same

[1:17:54] mistake they always make. Uh and everybody enjoyed that together including the person who made the mistake. This ah the one anothering was there, the relationships in Jesus were there, the love was there. Uh and they were all encouraged. I mean they're blown away even. They don't want to ever stop doing that. and it's all done on Zoom, you know, on their on their computers. Uh, so they need that in order to keep going. But just so we recognize, it's it's a it's a substitute. It's a pretty good one if it's well organized and you're going in the right direction. Uh, but we're missing some things, too. Yeah. So Paul can say in his letters, I long to be with you. I'm there in spirit. He's writing this letter and he's expressing his desire to be physically near them again. But nevertheless, he's writing a

[1:18:43] letter for their edification. He's writing a letter to them for their building up. Um, okay. Any number of directions that this could go from here. So, I want to give people resources around some of this. And there's one more concept or set of concepts that I want to pull from your experience and your study as it relates to this church concept and this gathering concept. Same thing. And I look at what some of my charismatic friends might call the five-fold ministry. I look in Ephesians 4. God seems very clear through the pen of the apostle Paul that that he's given gifts to the church to all of those people who form the body of Christ for the building up of those people. They

[1:19:34] these are you know he gives apostles and some prophets and some you know evangelists and pastor teachers. Yes. Right. So he gives these gifts to the whole church, to all of the people to build them up until they all uh to help them be equipped to do the work of the ministry until we all reach the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ, right? Or the maturity of Christ. And so we're all supposed to be doing the work of the ministry. There's a whole conversation here. How are we to understand the gifts that Jesus gives to the church in the form of those five nouns? How do we parse those in this restored model of what we're talking

[1:20:21] about in the New Testament church? Yeah. Um I I get that question a lot. uh people want to know about how church government should look then if we start to look at the assembly differently how does church government then work again I I think it's important to still go back to think in terms of a home because this is the context in which all that stuff was written even when he's talking about apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastor teachers these are just these are just folks who are working among uh who all have different functions. Uh some of them had a function toward the evangelizing of outsiders and bringing more people in. So some of their activities don't necessarily have the

[1:21:10] greatest visibility in an in an assembly because in the assembly we're working on one another. It's outside the assembly where the evangelistic activity took place primarily and the apostles would have been involved in that. uh prophets seem to have more of a role inside the gathering the way Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 14. So I I I have not been one to try to figure out where are the apostles today, where are the prophets today, where are the evangelists today. I just know that God has placed within certain people certain gifts. Uh 1 Corinthians 12 that they will have a calling to be doing one thing or another. And I honor that. Uh I just know that when we get together though,

[1:22:00] let's make sure let all things be done for the building up of the body. Uh whoever is doing it, I don't care. You call yourself an apostle, fine. That's okay with me. Just as long as we recognize that we all have the spirit of God, that we are all huggy. We are all saints. I'm not just some slug because you got your name that this big hot shot apostle dude. Stop that. You know, Jesus said, "He who would be first among you must be last. He would be leader must be the servant of all." You know, let's keep that mindset among all of us so that nobody's getting the big head and getting all the authority and power and starting to call the shots and tell everybody else what to do. Stop that. It happens a lot. Hardy. Amen. Yeah. In

[1:22:48] an American culture, too, it's Americans like to think of the the man is mandatory and you got to have the dude at the front who's Mr. CEO and stop that. You know, let's let's this is in the assembly. Jesus said so clearly, it shall not be so among you. Yeah. He goes out of his way to say, let no man call you master. You know, let no man call you rabbi. You have only one master. You have only one teacher. And that's, you know, essentially that's me. Yeah. uh he says, you know, that the the the among the Gentiles, you know, they're great ones really lorded over them. In fact, it's it's their it's their exalted ones that are the ones that exercise authority over people. And it's it's not going to be that way among you people.

[1:23:36] And in fact, if any if any of you wants to be the greatest in the kingdom, and he's going to need to make himself the slave of all of everyone, the people that are going to be exalted in God's economy, the people that are going to be elevated are not the ones who wear the nice suits and and get the big Bible and and whump it down on a big pulpit and are the focal point of a gathering in, you know, what I would not call as an actual gathering, but the event on a Sunday, you know, the thing that you go It's not going to be that person. It's going to be the person who with no thought to themselves is constantly looking out for ways to love and serve those in their circle of influence all around them. It's the spirit at work. That's what the spirit produces. So when you said church government, I was like,

[1:24:22] hm, I don't know if I would even use the word government here, right? Because I I don't think that passage seems to show if you look at Ephesians 4, there governing language doesn't really seem to be at all in usage there. No. In fact, what you have is these are gifts given to serve the whole body in this unique way until the entire body is equipped to do the ministry, equipped to do the work of ministry, until everyone in the body together reaches the stature of Christ's maturity and reaches the fullness of his stature and maturity. And that's very very interesting. So an apostle in this sense then the way that I've you tell me if I'm way off, okay? Okay, because I know we terminological precision is a by word between you and me. We're we're focusing on this sort of thing. Um, an apostle to me is just someone who sent out. You know, we could call a missionary an apostle today. It's

[1:25:11] a small a there's the twel apostles and then there's the other apostles and there's this whole discussion around like, okay, are they cterminous? I don't think that the 12 are the only apostles that exist. Acts 14:14 tells us Barnabas was an apostle, for example. Um, and in 1 Corinthians 15, you got Jesus appearing to the 12 and then later appearing to the apostles. Well, is it did he appear to the same group twice or is it a separate, you know, is it a separate group of people? I think of the apostles as the sentout ones, people who are sent out with the express purpose of maybe going and creating new Jesus communities wherever they're going. Right? That's what I think of as as an apostle. I think of a prophet as someone who is boldly proclaim not you know prophecy isn't again you pick your random rank and file Christian and they think prophecy is prediction of the future. Biblically speaking pro prophecy is much more about boldly proclaiming a

[1:26:01] message from God to people in the present to get them to change their course of action so that disaster doesn't fall among them. But it it could be it could be an exhortation. It could be telling people in your, you know, in your context, you have something that you think that they need to hear that you're convinced is from God. It's the person who's willing to say the uncomfortable thing, right? That's that's what a prophet seems to be doing. Or uh, you know, an evangelist is just the good news person, the person that walks around with the good news that Jesus is king on their lips at all times. Just can't stop talking about it. Is always wanting to let people know that they can they can submit themselves to Jesus as king. people and and you know they there's a there's a a dimension of that the benefits the gathering. There's a dimension of that that goes out and finds people who have not yet come to believe that that's the case and is calling them to repentance

[1:26:51] and to to turn from the kingdom of darkness and embrace King Jesus. That's the way that I think of the gospel is it's the gospel of the kingdom, right? Of Jesus as its king. And pastor teacher is just, you know, pastor shepherd. We hear pastor and teacher and leader and all of these phrases and we think of it as a noun, but it's an action noun. It's not a a noun describing what a thing is so much as what a thing does, right? Shepherd is one who engages in shephering kind of work. It's protective. It's looking out for people. It's this kind of thing. A teacher is not someone who just fills a role and then has obligations because of that role. A teacher is one who teaches. You can be a teacher without having an official role that you're filling as a teacher. A leader is not a leader who gets installed in some position in some organization in the or chart hierarchically over other people. It's

[1:27:38] one who leads the way by example from among a group of people. You know, I'm I'm rambling now, but the way that I think of these things, none of these terms needs to be defined in governmental hierarchical structural terms. Let me It just doesn't we we impose that on the on the text as well by my reckoning. Now everything you said needs to be considered uh as part of the truth of what's in in scripture but there is a sense in which apostle is used maybe like with a capital A in the first century. I I just look up the term every time it's found in the New Testament and then just take a look at it. It doesn't always just mean somebody's saying because sometimes it starts to be used as a technical term to refer to these some specific dudes who who are the

[1:28:26] apostles. But there's also a sense in which anybody like a word in our language that could be viewed as an apostle is missionary. One who is sent and that one who is on a mission who who is sent out to go on a mission to do so. Yeah, that's everything you said is right. But there are sometimes when these terms are used in the New Testament rather technically to refer to a specific um proper noun and not just as a noun itself. Yes. You know, and it yeah, you've got you've got the 12 like I said, right? So, you've got this this category of apostle. An apostle is simply one who sent out. And I I think it's really funny because you read Acts for example and they'll play with this

[1:29:14] where the ones who are sent out by the scattering of the Christians after the death of Steven is everybody but the sentout ones. So they'll kind of play with this as a joke. Everyone left Jerusalem except the apostles. So those who are sent out, the ones who are dispositionally maybe spiritually gifted for the going out function and then a subset of those are the specific 12 sent out ones who belonged to Jesus and were part of his inner circle, his earthly ministry. And then one of those guys defects and then dies. And then there's a sense where it's like, oh, we need to get another one of those guys in there, right? and and then there's a drawing of straws and you get Matias and all of this stuff I'm fully agreeing with where it's like those people who

[1:30:00] are that specific unique group seem to be a subset of the larger group but the the term is still used apostle to refer to that person and so that's where it's you got to look at the context of every single time it is used the the apostles or an apostle a person who's sent out and there's a difference there and a distinction then it does open up the possibility where we're not saying for example my Orthodox friends would claim this concept of apostolic succession beginning with them and then running through ignoring I think all of the other places that the spirit is at work to their own peril. I think it's dangerous. Um but then claiming that they have this doctrine and this practice that goes all the way back to the apostles. Um that

[1:30:49] can get really can get really interesting and really dangerous really fast. But yes, we've gone very far a field from our original conversation at this point. But it does apply these questions do come up as you start to consider from from the core understanding of gathering together to build up one another. Then these questions do develop. What then about who's the leader? But again, think in terms of home. It when we talk about church government, well both those words are modern really constructs. Church and government. Yeah. And we always tend to think that if some building or some institution, but we're not thinking about some gathering and and who's in charge here? Well, there is something to the effect of somebody being in charge of these small first century gatherings. And that's where elders and shepherds come to come into play. uh because

[1:31:37] somebody needs to be uh feeling the burden and the responsibility to make sure this this little group is on the right track that they are building up one another. They're not getting off on a tangent of some crazy ideas. So, somebody has that role and and Paul is careful to like send Timothy or or Titus to go appoint elders in every city. Titus 1:5 or in Acts 14:23 Paul is going back to all these cities where he'd evangelized and he is appointing elders in every church uh every assembly so that uh there is leadership or there is guidance and shephering going on all the time. Yes. And that brings me kind of

[1:32:25] to this this whole this whole terminological precision concept around specifically the three the three terms of overseer and shepherd and elder. So you got, you know, I think it's epis episcocoy, right? The the overseers, right? You got the shepherd. But poymen, interestingly, is only ever used as a noun, not referring to Jesus as a shepherd, as the great, you know, the good shepherd or an actual sheepkeeper. Yes. It's only used that one time in Ephesians 4, right? That's poman, right? Then you've got you've got the the elder, the presbuteros, right? Presbutereroy and kind of plural. So, how do we understand these terms? I always look at 1 Peter 5, right, where the three terms are sort of used all

[1:33:13] together in one passage. But how can we how can we start to get our head around what it means to be an elder in the home, in the family, in the community of God, right? An elder. Uh what does it mean to shepherd? I think shepherd is properly understood in like a verbal uh like an actual an activity, not necessarily just a noun again, right? Uh or being in being an elder, being an overseer. How do we get our head around those things in a home gathering uh uh context? Well, I think it's a natural organic development. Uh you might think of some of the earlier small group gatherings you were in. I think when let's say you're 25 years old or let's say you're 30 and let's say there's this older guy over there who's 60 who who already everybody kind of understands

[1:34:02] this guy gets it. Uh and he has this he he's looked up to as a guy a man of wisdom and understanding, some compassion and some spiritual maturity that u well he's the elder or he's a shepherd. Uh and he he's just those things regardless of whether he wants the title or not. He already is. It's it's organic. U rather than let's all take a vote and make sure we then give him a badge so that he can wear it when he walks in here and everybody knows then to bow down before him. Well, stop that. You know, just stop that. Again, go back to the teaching of Jesus. or we'll we'll form a we'll form a 501c3 nonprofit and we'll make sure that he's uh listed as the you know chief executive officer of that nonprofit and we'll we'll write his name on the checks

[1:34:49] and we'll put his name on the website as you know senior pastor I should hasten to add that I do understand that if you are going to build a building okay okay fine fine I'm not criticizing that or saying you're going to go to hell because you built a building uh or or you're going to have a 501c3 I'm also not criticizing or condemning that but uh I there needs to be some organization and even by your state laws you need to have some kind of articles of incorporation that may apply to all that all okay fine fine fine but let's just still keep on target with when we get together we are building up one another and we are hopefully growing people who are uh developing into shepherds and elders and teachers and people who have these skills skills who are getting

[1:35:40] better at it over time instead of just remaining the same slug they were 40 years ago when they first became a Christian. And I I suggest that if you go to a worship service every week for 40 years, you can still be the same slug you were when you started. uh there because there's no opportunity for development, no opportunity for one anothering, no opportunity for growth and edification or extremely little. So there I guess that statement is somewhat critical. We all know the pew sitters. Yeah, we do. We do. I I was going to say I'm I may even be more I may even be more radical than you on this point, right? Uh, I I think Paul would be horrified at the prospect of a group of Christians

[1:36:28] gathering together to form a 501c3 nonprofit that has a formal relationship with a government that I think he would call beastly regard I mean, whatever, you know, I'm I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free, but uh I think that if if you create an organization that is a corporation, meaning a separate body, okay, that then has a formal relationship with the government where we don't have to pay taxes to the government as long as we don't say anything critical of it and then we call that thing a church. I think Paul would be horrified by that whole uh that whole can of worms. But I might be I might be even more radical. But again, the important thing is the gathering. It is the assembly. This church terminology is confusing and misleading and heads us off in in a wrongheaded uh vein. Yeah, 100%

[1:37:17] agreement. Well, we're coming up on hour and 42 minutes. This has been phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal discussion for me. I've It's been clarifying and again, I've just felt less crazy by the minute. So, if uh if you're a heretic of some kind, then you're my kind of heretic. But uh we've covered a lot. We've covered a wide swath of things. Is there anything that we should have talked about relative to all of this discussion that we haven't surfaced that you'd like to include as something that we need to go look at or we need to go study, including, hey, maybe personally to me, you'd hand me off something of a homework assignment. You should look into this next. Is there anything that we haven't covered yet that you'd you'd like to to surface? Well, we almost touched on it there at the very end. And one of the things I find in in the responses I've gotten to

[1:38:07] to these videos, uh, there's there is a tendency, this is a a common human tendency of humans once they start to get involved in something like the small church, the the house church movement. There there's a tendency for us uh, it's a very fleshly tendency to start lobbing verbal hand grenades at anybody who does things in a different way. Stop that. Don't do that. Uh just uh appreciate what you're doing. Know why you're doing it. Keep doing it. No reason to start condemning everybody else. Uh uh if you wanted to have somebody join you that's already in one, go ahead and ask them. Maybe they'd like to come. But but do what you can yourself.

[1:38:54] We the the splintering and divisions of Christianity have been a real sore spot, an embarrassment before the watching world for hundreds and hundreds of years. Let's not let's not add to that anymore. But let us let's continue to love one another. Even if somebody's going to a Catholic church or to a Orthodox church, you know, it could you don't know where their heart is. Paul said something in Romans 14 was let everybody be fully convinced in their own mind on all these issues. Let think it through. I mean even if you're thinking wrongly just think it through. And then secondly uh do not be condemning your brother. It's before his own master that he stands or falls. So let's not invol get

[1:39:43] involved in the judging game. God already has that job. It's not my job. let God do it. I don't want the job to be to be honest. It's way too complicated and uh very controversial. You're going to end up being hated for judging other people anyway. So, just just stop that. Just do what's right as you see fit and um you your life will be so much easier, so more healthy, so more loving and caring and compassionate. And uh just worry about that. Yes. Yes. That is a good word. Yeah. It's it's almost freeing to have a restored definition, not a redefinition, a restored definition of the church. Again, I think of and this is maybe we could have talked about this too, the there's the

[1:40:30] concept of the the the universal church or the you have for example Paul can say um the gifts that God gives to the church and it's a singular church uh and it seems to be all believers everywhere and then you have um the church that meets in the house of Priscilla and Aquilla or the church that meets in the house of the various different households and families mentioned for example in Romans 16. Um, so I think of that as the the the big C church if we were to put it this way would be all of the people everywhere throughout time and space who have ever claimed Christ as Lord and and entered into relationship with him. Right? That's that's one thing. And then these these smaller gatherings are just instances of that big thing. It's just a it's it's people getting together and gathering for the purpose of, as you said, mutual

[1:41:19] edification and and stirring one another up to good works and and uh living as if Jesus is king together in some kind of a community sense. But that's actually really freeing because if if that's the church, if that's what our definition of the church is, you know, where I can find an awful lot of those people is at those pe is at that event that happens on a Sunday. As long as I don't think of that thing as the church, but as the people who are going in there as that's that's Jesus's body in there, that's those people, the ones who really have trusted in Jesus as Lord. Because guess what? Unfortunately, in your building, in your denomination, in your 501c3 nonprofit, however you parse this out, if you're part calling something else the church, you're going to have people who actually aren't saved, who aren't believers, who maybe even have been pew

[1:42:08] pew sitters for those 30, 40 years and never actually bend bowed the knee to Jesus as Lord, who never actually came to the point where they believed that Jesus actually is the king of the universe. But if if all people everywhere who have trusted in Christ are the church, I know those people at the at the Catholic church up the road. I know some of those people at the the Orthodox parish just up the road from them. Uh I know some of those people in, you know, the the the people over there that I think are kind of odd with, you know, this doctrine or that doctrine. Have they trusted in Christ as Lord? Those people are the church. And if I can find some way to I've got a you know I've got a Facebook group where I've got Catholics in there. I've got Orthodox people in there. I've got some some Seventh Day Adventists in there. I've got people from all these different groups. But if we get together and we're

[1:42:55] all saying, "Well, look, this is the church. This is this is Christ's people." It's freeing because it allows you, as you said, to set aside our doctrinal differences of certain things and unify around a person and unify around Christ himself. And it's this apologetic of John 17 where he goes out again, Jesus goes out of his way to say that the world will know that the father sent the son when we together are one, are unified in the same way that he and the father are unified. And that's that is a baffling statement because we're we're so divided. But the way forward isn't to unify around doctrine because that's what's separating us. I'm not saying flippantly doctrine is unimportant. It's very very important.

[1:43:44] But if we try to unify around doctrine, that's how we get where we've gotten. We need to unify around a person. Y and we need to unify as the church, as the body of Christ, as his hands and feet in the world. And I think that's the way forward. And I think that the disc discussion around what the church is and acting with some terminological precision and trying to have this conversation for the love of God for the good of others is is is part of the way forward. So my goodness, I just I want to give you the the the final words, but just I feel very very edified and very built up by this conversation. And I think that there's a lot that people can take from it, but let's hand you the microphone. Uh you deserve the honor here. I'm going to hand you the microphone for fi for a final word in this discussion. Well, um, in case some of this stuff is is still confusing to

[1:44:31] people, and I I certainly can understand because it took me 40 years to work my way through all this, uh, um, my my website, tom wadsworth.com, has a lot of this stuff. My my YouTube channel uh, at YouTube, we will we will link it. It'll be in the description. It'll all be there. there's the my seven videos are there that explain all this stuff uh and that will be helpful and I also my full dissertation is on my website people can download that for free uh it's other resources there but uh I I if I a closing admonition to everybody um the New Testament the the scriptures are where we get the greatest enlightenment on this don't start with an assumption

[1:45:19] that we the way we're doing it today is right? And then try to justify it. Go back. Go back uh clear your mind and just start to build a fresh understanding of what Christ is all about, what Christianity is all about, what the eklesia is all about, what the gatherings are all about, what elders are all about, all these things that we've talked about. And then just let it arise out of the text. And then um wow, it's it's mind-blowing and it's revolutionizing. It it'll lead you in a place that's I think much happier than this thing that we have built which is has all kinds of problems. Yeah. Goodness. That's a good word Dr. Wodsworth. So um once again my hardest

[1:46:09] most sincere thanks for your time and for your energy and for your ministry and for what you have been working on. Uh, I think that you're I think that you're a gift to the church and I uh am grateful that you were able to we were able to take this time together. is now nearing two hours to to to spread this good word and and to talk about these things and um I will be continually praying for for God to empower what you're up to by the spirit because I think that this is if if I'm if I'm naming my hope for this phase of God's people, I'm hoping we all start to move more in this this sort of a direction. Uh I think that we would we would all be a lot better for it and the world would know more. it would know that Christ is who he says he is and that the father sent him uh to the degree that we

[1:46:58] succeed at uh at being unified and loving one another and uh and edifying one another and building one another up. So, thank you for your for your teaching, for what you've been working on. And uh you're welcome back anytime we can find stuff to talk about, I'm sure. Uh thank you again and and God bless you for your work. Thank you, Tim. And God bless you as well. All righty. Take care. And further up and further