227. When Is It Time to Leave Your Church? (And When It's Just Your Pride Talking)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's impossible.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Let me tell you what I believe.

Speaker 3 (00:03):
It's your weakness, it's not your technique.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Don't think you know.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
The Impossible Life Podcast and yes, sitting on a winning lottery. Second,
an idea that is fully formed, fully understood.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
That sticks.

Speaker 4 (00:22):
This is the Impossible Life Podcast because Nick and I
are attempting to live impossible lives. What we know is
that nothing is impossible. So instead of using impossible as
an excuse to not try, we'll use the pursuit of
impossible as an accelerant for greatness. If something's never been
done before.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
That just means it's unexplored.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
If they tell you it's too hard, it's just waiting
to be simplified. Impossible as a default label used by
uncourageous people unwilling to take a risk.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
The real truth is this.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
The solution to any impossible task starts with this question,
if I had to, what would it take?

Speaker 1 (01:05):
What would it take?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Welcome to another episode of the Impossible Life Podcast. I'm
your co host, Nick Surface, and I'm looking across at
a man so full of ancient wisdom he dreams in Aramaic.
That's right, friends. The modern day philosophizer Joshua Kraft, a
kiss a philosophizer who thinks in ancient languages and speaks
in modern eloquence.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Wow, man, that is I hope I can live up
to that. Honestly, dude, you on live up to it.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
I mean you're wearing a tri dent.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
I mean, yeah, I wanted to wear this. I'm going
to try to wear this anytime on the show. This
is my This is proof. Like Lindsay doesn't have one
of these. She says, she's the number one person in
the Garrett fan club. I have a trident that he
gave me, the dating graduator from buds. It's a real trident.
It's real trident right there.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Which is special.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
You can also buy those like fifteen bucks, but that
is special.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
But you know, you know what she does not.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Only leave it here in my office in my house
because I don't want to have like stolen valor in
my life and be like, hey, my best friends and
navy seal.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, people people can get mad about that, and rightfully so,
Lindsay does actually have a necklace with a trident on
it that you can only buy that if you're like
a navy seal.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Or all right, So so it's one A and one B.
Then I'll let the audience decide who's one.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Be love you Brobot your one B. I'm just like,
she's the president of the fan club like that much.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
We know she does have the she does have the pajamas. Yeah,
I'm not gonna I'm not I don't wear pajamas.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Guess who bought them for her? My wife?

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Oh well, the number one fan of the Knick surface
club she is.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, she doesn't have pajamas with my face on it,
and I'm okay with that. But Lindsay's like different level
of fandom. And my wife's British, so she like, you know,
she tells me she loves me by just not saying anything.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
You know. Yeah, it's very very demure. This is really
what we wanted to talk about.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
No, not at all, but it's fun and I was
like to have a little bit of fun because you know, look,
you got gotta be having fun in life. There's the
joy of the Lord is definitely in our friendship, Josh,
and I'm.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Very grateful for and it's our strength.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah, it is one percent.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Man.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
I don't say that lightly. So Man, I'm this episode today.
I just I felt like we had to do it.
This episode is when is it okay to leave the church?
And Josh and I are really going to be answering
this question. I'll tell you that this is Josh has
been in church. I mean, if you don't know, I'm
calling him Josh because he's my friend. But he is
known in these parts as Pastor Josh. For those of

(03:29):
you that don't know who he is, he's he's a
pastor well in Frisco. He's a pastor of our church,
Elevate Life Church. His dad, Pastor Keith Graft, started the
church twenty five years ago along with Garrett's dad and
a few other people. So Josh, our pastor Josh has
grown up literally around church. I mean, you've been in
it your whole life since day zero, and you.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
I mean, I've never not been in church. You know,
there's a lot of people. I'm thirty eight, so there's
a lot of people who are mind as you've left
the church. And but I've never I mean I've never
had a time in my life that I was in
church on a really, really consistent basis. Like I grew
up before my dad started the church. He was a
traveling evangelist who was itinerant. We went to all different churches.

(04:10):
Whenever I wasn't with my dad, we had a home
church that we went to. And so I've grown up
in all kinds of church culture, different environments like Methodists
and Baptists and Charismatic and everybody else. And so I've
I've I don't know, I don't I feel like I'm
getting older. It's like I'm not young, I guess for
most for a lot of people. But I've seen a

(04:32):
lot and I've experienced a lot, and I've i have
a lot of opinions about that. You know, people would
call that church heard. I don't know if I don't
really like that term, but I understand the dynamic of
that for sure.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
So yeah, so let me just give you like a
little bit of background on my experiences with this. My
thoughts are, I think in today's age, you know, here
in twenty twenty five, recording this in July, I think
it's so common for people to leave churches, like it's
not even I don't even know that it's a big
deal in a lot of places, because I mean in
many churches, and I've you know, I'm speaking from experience.

(05:04):
You can go into the church and apart from the
greeterer saying hi to you, you can go there, watch
the service leave, and no one would ever know if
you never came back again. Right, So that's that's very common.
But then you'll have people who are plugged in, and
this is I've experienced this a lot. You have people
who are plugged in until they're not, and they're then
they're like, hey, we're leaving the church. And some guys,

(05:24):
I mean, I've you know, being a mighty men as
people who listen to this podcast. No, Garrett and I
help lead Mighty Men. There's over four hundred men there
every week, and I'm we have four tribe leaders. I'm
one of them, and I have over one hundred and
twenty guys that meet in my tribe every Saturday. So
I have a lot of dudes that I'm responsible for
and I don't take that lightly. I really don't. And
so I when sometimes some guys will leave, and I'm

(05:45):
saying that to let you know, like I've been doing
this for a few years and I've had my minor experience,
You've been in this your whole life. Guys will leave
and they'll just drop off and not even they won't
even want to have a conversation with anybody, like you'll
you'll try and reach out and they just blank you,
or they'll text somebody and then they're gone. So so
that's that's one way. Other guys will, you know, to
give you their reasons. They disagree with something that came

(06:05):
from the front. They didn't like you know what was said. Uh,
they you know, their wife doesn't like it there, their
kids don't like it there, whatever, there's a better type
of ministry at another church for their kid because they
have a certain condition or whatever it may be. And
then you'll have other people who are like, we're leaving
because God told us to leave, and so you have
a lot of really varied reasons. And like my question

(06:27):
is that I want us to explore, like when is
it actually okay to leave the church, because clearly not
everybody's going to be everywhere for for all of time
right in the modern day, So like I don't I mean,
I want to give you some some space to to
to bring your own thoughts. But that's where that's kind
of where I'm starting at. This is like from a
modern day perspective.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, I think you know, when you look at there's
there's a there's kind of two different questions here. I
feel like the first is why do people leave the church?
And then when is it okay to leave the church?
And those aren't always the same thing. Yeah, right, So
so like you you got onto some of the reasons
why people leave at church, Well that's not maybe the
best reason. And you know, our context is what people

(07:08):
would call like a megachurch context, But there's really not
like when you look at data and you know, just
the experience, there's really not that much difference between the
dynamics you'd see in a house church, in a megachurch
or any other church for that matter, just because people
are people and human beings are human beings and so

(07:28):
the number one.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
What do you mean by that though when you say
there's not much difference in the dynamics, because I think
a lot of people would be would disagree because in
a house church, if you have twenty people, like if
you show up one week and don't show up next week,
like people know.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Well in terms of the in terms I'm saying, in
terms of the dynamics that actually cause people to leave, right,
Like like you know, some people like me, like I'm
an introvert. So I don't want to be known.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Hey, good job you're a pastor.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, yeah, I know, right, So I don't. I don't
I want to be the guy that comes in and
sits and just doesn't really you know, I'm the guy
probably naturally I'm not this way now. I mean, because
you have to learn how to exist in society. But
I'm the guy that would come in even to like
a house church and wouldn't say anything. I would just
be there and you know, just be a quieter person.

(08:14):
And so there's people like different flavors and but but
the reasons why people leave the church, so this is
like across not just Evangelicals and Protestants, it's Catholics and
all that stuff too. So the number one reason, according
to research, why people leave the church is because they
lose they lose faith in religious teaching. So a majority

(08:37):
of people who leave the church, the reason why they
leave is just is because they say they they simply
no longer believe. And you could break that down into
a million different things. A lot of that, most mostly
a lot of that has to do with the fact
that people were raised in church. They're raised in some
kind of faith and then they get older and their

(08:58):
faith is no longer fit for them. And there's this
passage in scripture where Jesus says to come to him
like a child, and so the way we interpret that
is have childlike faith. Well, the problem with that is
childlike faith only works when you're a child, right, experiencing
suffering and adversity and difficulty in your life and you know, death,
I mean different things. We've all experienced stuff like that,

(09:20):
having someone you care about, like the guy that taught
me how to be, the guy that was like my
older brother that I was around my whole life. His
name was Tad. He was in our church for a
long time and was one of the closest people in
my life. Got cancer and died, and you know, you
pray for someone to be healed and they're not healed,
and you go, okay, God, like I thought you said
all this stuff and I was taught all this stuff.

(09:42):
And so people go through experiences like that and they go, well,
I'm going to lose my faith. You know, there was
a guy you and me were in a mastermind together
last week, and there was a guy in that Mastermind
who said he has he's doubting God because his brother
just died of stage four k answer and his nephew
just got diagnosed with stage four cancer. So when you

(10:04):
start experiencing things like that, childlike faith is not really
going to help you, you know. And the Bible doesn't
say have childlike faith. We've just really interpreted that way.
So people, you know, and it depends on your context, right,
because people can say, well, I got really I got
really focused on science, and I'm focused on science, and

(10:24):
some people treat science like it's the enemy of God.
But God created science, and you know, I think you
could do a whole bunch of talking on this subject.
It's so deep. But that's the first reason. So people
like lost faith that they doubt religious teaching. Second is
they have conflict with the church over social or moral issues.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Right, And that's the one I want to dive into
more because I like knowing our audience. You know, if
you've lost your faith, that's a to me, that's a
different conversation. But for me, what I see that I'm
really curious about is this movement of people in between
church congregations or buildings or whatever you want to say,
that they just kind of hop around from one to another.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Well, what's yeah, I mean, your audience is a little
different than like the average church audience. But I'm thirty
percent of people who've left church in the past five
years left because of what the church had to say
about LGBTQ people. This is across America, or yeah, across
the United States.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
Where's where are you getting that from?

Speaker 1 (11:21):
So this is from the pri It's there. They are
a public religion there, They're the pri is the Public
Religion Research Institute. So you could you could google these statistics.
A person could listening to this. Thirty percent who left
church were turned off by negative religious teachings about the

(11:44):
treatment of LGBTQ people. So these first two reasons are
kind of the same thing. Actually, it's like, I don't
believe in religious teaching anymore, right because because the Bible,
you know, I saw this really interesting thing. And the
other day there was a guy on Joe Rogan, who's
a Democratic senator from the state of Texas, and he

(12:06):
said that the Bible is not clear on abortion, and
that could this guy could say he's a Christian, he
couldn't have been further from any kind of biblical thought
as it relates to that, and so what you have
is people that think, so, man, this is like deep concept.
But there's what's called in theology. There's what's called conservative

(12:27):
theology and liberal theology. So conservative theology is not like
conservative politics. But conservative theology says scripture is sufficient, So
all we need is scripture. Right, that's a really simple
simplification of what conservative theology is. Liberal theology says scripture
is not sufficient, and so we have to fill in

(12:48):
all these gaps with cultural clues. So people that talk
about how God is accepting of all different kinds of relationships,
whether it's an LGBT thing or cohabitating, not getting married, whatever, Right,
it's not it's not about honing in on that one
specific issue. But people that want to talk about that

(13:09):
talk about it like, well, the Bible is kind of unclear,
and so we just need to interpret that based on
the modern context of the life people are living. And
the Bible actually is pretty clear. It's clear on this.
There's this concept in scripture called fornication that is just
generally sex outside of marriage. So if you're not if

(13:31):
you're not married to a woman as a man, and
you commit any like sexual act, you are fornicating. So
there's there's a anyway, there's there's all these different concepts
like that, well, you know, so what but the balance
to that, I think is the church. So in Romans

(13:53):
chapter one, Roman chapter one and two really great verses
to read on like social and moral issues, because Paul
talks in Romans chapter one about how God gave the
Romans over to a depraved mind, and if you know
Roman history, that's their the decadence of Rome. But then
Romans two starts, so Paul says, God judge them and
all this stuff, and then Romans two starts, and Romans

(14:13):
two says, list all the sins that we commit, right,
and he even uses a term in there, like people
who invent sin, that people who come up with new sins,
And he says, we're without excuse when we judge, when
we judge people, and we do the same thing. So
there's this balance to like the you know, so people
hear the preaching and a lot of times like I

(14:35):
remember one time I was sitting this is a long
time ago, this is when they were talking about legalizing
gay marriage. I was sending at lunch with my dad
and another really well known pastor that a lot of people
would know if I said his name. And they were
talking about passing gay marriage, and this really well known
pastor was talking about how awful it is and how
evil it is and how dark it is and all

(14:56):
that stuff, and so my dad goes, well, what do
you think, Like I was like twenty five, It's like
I'm maybe I was in my twenties. I was like, yeah,
it doesn't matter what I think. You guys don't care.
We're just setting lunch. Let's just try to have a
good lunch. And my dad goes, no, really tell me
what you think. And I said, man, if we're going
to take a stance like that on one sin, we

(15:16):
have to take a stance like that on all sin.
So like the Bible, also, the Bible doesn't say God
hates homosexuality. The Bible does say God hates divorce r.
And there's pastors that I know that are divorced. I mean,
there was a time in church history right where if
you were divorced, they would ask you to leave the church. Right.
There's churches that there's churches that still do that in
very fundamental, very fundamental churches. And because the Bible says

(15:39):
God hates divorce. Well, well, we have to. We have
to strive to be the kind of church environment where
you know, the story of the woman caught in adultry
is very interesting because Jesus didn't condone the sin, but
he also didn't condemn the sinner. And I don't know
if the modern church does a good job of striking

(16:01):
that balance. I think it's okay to not condone the sin,
but then it's very easy to It's very easy for
the majority of people to hone in on certain issues.
So anyway, that's why people left again. Like I said,
we go through all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
So let me let me let me bring around for
a second, because you're talking about like some deep so
so I know I appreciate. That's why I want to
do this with you, because I think that you have
a good a I know you'll have a lot to
say and it won't just be Josh's opinion be you know,
I think it's interesting to look at because my question
underlying this when I talk to somebody, because because I'll
have people, you know, just being honest, people will come

(16:36):
to me and they'll have complaints. In this case, it
might be about your dad or it might be about
something else that's come from the front, and my response
is always the same no matter what they say. I go,
let's just assume that everything you say is right. What's
your reaction, like, what how do you think you should respond?
Because when people bring like he said this and I
don't agree, they're looking for me to kind of like
now get into an argument about scriptural references and stuff.

(16:59):
And I've just never seen that be super effective because
it's like, we're all imperfect. You say, like, you'd like
to quote Augustine which says, I know my theology is imperfect.
I just don't know where it was John macarthurac oh,
John Maccarlokay, sorry, but I love that quote. I just
I just give everything to Augustine because he's the man.
But yeah, so I always say, like, let's just assume
you're right. What do you think you should do? Because

(17:20):
and that always people I was like, and so I've
had guys like, well I would just leave the church,
and like, you really think that's the right way to
do it, because if you now go to another church
and that guy says something you disagree with, you're going
to leave there too.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
Because so it becomes a pattern.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
So like this is where I think underlying all this stuff,
I think there's a question of like when is it
okay to leave the church? Well, what's the purpose of
the church in the first place? Right, because that's that's
actually really important. I don't know if I don't want
to misdirect you, but do you I mean, do you
do you agree with that or no?

Speaker 1 (17:49):
I mean I think that you know, what's so fascinating
to me about the church itself is that it is
a it's this guy that humans have to facilitate, you know.
It's it's like, I mean, the maybe maybe the right
comparison point is to say, Okay, it's like if God

(18:11):
said this concept of grace exists, but Jesus isn't gonna
die on the cross. We have to figure out how
to die on the cross ourselves, right. It's it's it's
a it's such a challenge to take this this idea
that God has and of the church. Jesus came and
he founded the church and he said, he said to
Peter up on this rock, I'm gonna build my church.
Which even people take that interpretation that that one thing.

(18:36):
People take that and they go in two different directions
with it. So Catholics hear that, they hear Jesus say
upon this rock, I'm gonna build my church, and like,
that's Peter, he's the first pope. Well, the word the
term pope didn't come about un till hundreds of years later. Okay,
Peter wasn't ever called the pope, but anyway, everyone knows
I'm a Protestant who's on this cassil. Then then you

(18:56):
have this this other branch of Protestantism, which is about
God's going to build his church on the rock of
revelation that Jesus Christ is the son of God, because
that's what Peter said, he is the Christ. And so
even at that one point you start to have human division,
right where Jesus says, I'm going to build my church.

(19:18):
And to me, that illustrates what's happened over the two
thousand years of the Church's existence. Is this dynamic of
us trying to take a perfect idea and a perfect
expression of what God wants and try to imperfectly build
that and apply that as people. Because the dynamic you're taught,

(19:39):
and there's so many different ways this can be expressed
and explained, but every church the Catholic Church as a monolith.
Every Protestant church, every church you can name, has humanity
within it. And within that humanity is not just imperfection.
Within that, humanity's sin. Right. So there's this dynamic, and
I'll just talk about this. I feel like in the

(19:59):
com text of what you were saying, there's this dynamic
that exists within human beings. I don't know, I couldn't
tell you where it came from, but I know it exists.
And that's we have a we have a desire within us,
So I can tell you where it came from. It
came from God. We have a desire within us to worship, right,
and we have a deep and you mean you talked
about worship, but we have this deep desire to put

(20:21):
something on a pedestal in our life. Right. Well, then
the problem with that for so many people, Christians, well
meaning people, they have the most sincere motives in doing this.
They go to a church and it's all about taking
the personality of that leader and worshiping. Now the leader
and worshiping like putting that person on the pedestal. The

(20:43):
only person who should be on the pedestal is Christ, right,
is Jesus himself, that's who we're worshiping. So when people
get sideways about what the pastor says or what the
pastor does, that's because the pastor is not meeting their
expectation of God. And that's just an impose. It's one
of the reasons why I've said this a lot of
different times in my life. I don't want to be

(21:04):
a pastor because I don't want the I don't want
the weight of the expectation that other people have for
me to be something that I can't possibly live up to. Right,
And that's the dynamic of many pastors. Does that mean
pastors aren't held to a higher standard. No, for sure,
they're held to a higher standard. But by who that's

(21:24):
the other question. Right, So then people go, well, pastors
should be held to a higher standard, And so then
they point out all these verses from scripture and like about,
well we should we should expose false teachers, and we
should expose false prophets, and we should all blah blah
blah blah blah. Well, what they miss is the entire
context of the New Testament Church in that so all

(21:46):
these like context matters in scripture, right, So in all
these verses in times Paul's talking about you didn't have
like churches everywhere. The church at Corinth was the the
Christian church in the city, right, so the Christians who
are in that city, or the church in Jerusalem, or
the church in Galatia, or the church at Ephesus, you

(22:09):
know whatever, whoever the the different epistles are written to
Paul would write to them and say, here's how you
treat someone who you have a relationship with. So if
someone's teaching falsehoods in your church that you have a
relationship with, you should you should talk about it. But
now we've constructed like a monolith of the church where

(22:32):
you have a whole segment of Christians who feel like
it's their their responsibility from God to call out a
false teacher anywhere where they identify like false teaching, right,
which is another top reason why people leave the church.
So it's this disillusioned illusionment with that. That's the third reason,

(22:55):
is this disillusionment with hypocrisy, like this disillusionment with hypocrisy
or humanity. And also like what's tied into that is scandals, you.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Know, right, So so you so you bring up this
interesting point and what I want to I want to
underscore because I thought about this myself and I'm appreciating
just exploring this with you. So, first of all, the
relationship portion you talked about is so interesting because we forget,
these guys didn't have like they they got thrown out
of the Jewish synagogues.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
So where are they going. They're in people's houses.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Like when you get three thousand people added to your
number in a day in Jerusalem, that's kind of a
problem because where you go, well, you can't. So you've
got a bunch of people that are gonna be meeting
in the house that says they broke bread, they had
fellowship in prayer. So what's happening is now these people
are like doing life together and so they really are
around each other all the time. It's like you said,
it wasn't like, well, forget this. You know, I don't

(23:44):
like the North Crinsthians Church, so I'm gonna go down
the road to the South Corinthians Church.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
And it's also not like.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
You know, first Corinthian Assembly then Second Corinthian Assembly.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Right, yeah, it's very early on. Now here's what's also
interesting about this. So in the Old Test, like I
terribly Kabbo, who I think is phenomenal. She does the
Bible recap and I always recommend for people to do that.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
I do it myself.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
She she said this, and she may have gotten from
somewhere else, but I want to make sure I give credit.
She says, don't yell, wear scripture whispers, and don't whisper
where scripture yells, which is basically saying like, don't major
on the miners. Well, here's what's so interesting Old Testament man,
We've got exact specifications. You build this, you build the
inner courts like this. This is how you make the arc.
This is exactly how many rings should be in the posts.

(24:28):
This is what they should be made of. Use this
type of I mean, God could not have been more specific,
right of like how to build this thing that was shadow?

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Good?

Speaker 2 (24:37):
No, yeah, I mean so he's very specific, right And
so obviously the Jews had that. You come in the
New Testament and Jesus, Jesus spends this whole time on Earth,
does not talk about He says, upon this rock, I
will build my church. And it's like, okay, that's the
first time he talks about the church. And it's the
first time the word church is used, right Gray, Okay, correct, Josh, yeah, exactly.

(24:57):
That's the first time it's used is when when Jesus
does it. Okay, so great, and so it's like, all right, Jesus,
we'll like, what do we do?

Speaker 3 (25:03):
All right?

Speaker 2 (25:03):
All authority on heaven and art has been given to me,
so go create disciples, and off he goes. And then
we have like this, So God is purposely not prescripted
any sort of church methodology.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
We then have Paul.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Who mentions about the you know, the fivefold as we've
come to know them. But even that is like one
mention and it's not like they didn't go this is
how God did church. And if you don't do this that, like,
it's very hard I think for somebody to stand from
a dogmatic standpoint of like, this is how church are
supposed to be done, and if you don't do it,
you're wrong.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Well, I think that there's there's safety and certainty and right,
oh for sure, and we're all ultimately this This is
what this is illustrating the point because the church is
a God idea that's humanly applied, right, right, and so
you can be very certain about Jesus. You can be

(25:56):
very certain about God. But you can't be certain about
the church at any point. You can't. You can't be
certain about the leadership of the church. This is the
This is what faith is, right is it's trusting in
not what you don't know. It's it's trusting in the evidence.
It's it's having confidence that things are going to work
out because all of like if you strip back all

(26:17):
the end, this is what deconstructionists due, which isn't very
helpful because deconstruction comes from a very cynical, negative perspective
on the church, Like like I want to I know
we're jumping around, but I want to give a reason,
like a good reason to leave a church. Okay, good
reason to leave a church is if they have if
they're if they're if they're not teaching the gospel right right.

(26:40):
The Nicene Creed in three hundred and I think it
is three twenty nine a d. The Nicene Creed, Constantine
gathered all the bishops, all the leaders of all the
churches in the Roman Empire and said, we've got to
codify Christianity. It was all over the place. People were
calling each other heretics, on and on and on. Right,
So imagine it is. Yeah, imagine if people were doing

(27:01):
that today, but we didn't have a foundation of what
it meant to be a Christian, Like that's what they
were dealing. I mean, these two are fighting each other,
killing each other, and so they come together. And one
of the goals of the Council of Nicea is to
there was a there was a bishop named Arian who
was teaching that Jesus wasn't divine, he wasn't God, he

(27:22):
was just a human being. Right, So they were going
to address that and just determine whether or not that
was heresy. So they established the earliest Christian creed, the
earliest belief set for Christianity is what's called the Nicene Creed,
and still to this day, this is like the fundamental
statement of faith for Christianity, and it's stuff that you

(27:47):
and I would just have probably take for granted. Like
we believe in one God, the Father, Almighty, maker of
things invisible and invisible, one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, begotten not made. So Arian talk that Jesus
was a normal human. So God was begotten, not made.
He's not a Jesus was not a created being. He
was God in the flesh, Jesus came for our salvation.

(28:10):
He was fully God and fully man, he suffered, rose again.
Then he'll then one day he'll come and he'll judge everybody.
We believe in the Holy Ghost. And later on they added, uh,
they did another council. The history of church is just
a bunch of meetings. It's like, let's have a meeting.
So later on they did another council where they added

(28:30):
some things to like we believe in one church, one baptism,
on and on. So we've defined what what kind of
biblical Christianity is and what it means to teach the gospel.
So if a church is is is if a person
is a false teacher, they're not teaching biblical Christianity, they're
not teaching according to scripture. They're teaching according to something else.

(28:51):
Now here's the balance to that. Because the term false
teacher is thrown around so much in today's culture, how
do you actually know if someone's a false teacher? Okay,
Galatians Chapter one, verse six or nine gives gives this
perspective that a person's Paul's talking to the church and
he says, you're being fooled by people who deliberately twist

(29:15):
the truth concerning Christ. So and then he says, basically,
let gods let a curse from God fall on anyone
who preaches a different kind of gospel. Okay, So how
do you know someone is really really a false teacher
and not just ignorant? Right?

Speaker 4 (29:29):
Right.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
The way to know if someone's a false teacher is
if you know their intention is to deliberately twist the Bible. Right.
The problem that many people have who leave churches today
is they have decided and this is the problem that
we have in relationships too, because we're all human beings.
They've decided to assign motive where they don't know for
sure if there's what the motive is.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Right, yeah, big time, especially if you're not close to
the person and you just.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
And we do that every day, and we've had that,
We've all had that happen.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
To us where someone so trained in that's that's what's
called the news media today, like let's talk about this
famous person and we're all just going to pass our opinions,
and man, can.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
You believe it? So it's one thing. It's one thing
to describe an action, it's another thing to describe a motive.
So when you say this person did this. Okay, great,
that's objective fact, right, can't deny it. This is why
they did it. Like, that's you'd have to know that person. Okay.
So leaving a church because someone's a false teacher, you
would have to verify that their teacher according to scripture,

(30:29):
acording with the Book of Galatian says, you'd have to
verify that their motive is to teach falsely.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Now, there's some obvious, egregious examples where you wouldn't really
Like if someone comes out and says, hey, guys, Jesus
is not the only way, and like this sounds absurd
right to even say that, Like if someone's like there's
other ways to the Father than Jesus or whatever, like,
and I'm just using an extreme example. That's one where
you're like, Okay, don't really need to check the motive
because you're you're literally going against everything that.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah. Well, like the thing with false teaching that a
lot of people do is they say, this person is
trying to twist this and make it seem like it's true,
you know, so, so Paul says. In Tew, Timothy says
that a time's gonna come when people will no longer
listen to sound and hold wholesome teaching. They'll follow their
own desires. And so like, people look at what we
would call prosperity Gospel teachers and they say, okay, that

(31:19):
person is a false teacher. Now, the Biblical definition of
a false teacher is different than our definition of a
false teacher. So our definition of a false teacher is
someone who says the wrong thing, okay, and someone who
says something that's not biblically accurate. So we're all false teachers. Ye,
what you're saying exactly. God's definition of a false teacher
is someone who intentionally does that, who knows better and

(31:43):
still chooses to deceive people. Right, there are people that
do that for sure, right, yeah, there are people that
have Well, well, then how do you call out false teaching. Well,
you go develop a relationship with that person, right, which
is hard, I mean, which granted is hard in any
church environment or any group environment whatever. Or you trust

(32:04):
that that person has accountability structures around them, which is
also a challenge, right because you're you and I like,
there's there's there's there's true realities to the dynamic of church,
and that's that some churches are so structured and so
built out, and they've been going for so long, or
they're so large that you can't just sit down and
have a meeting with the senior leader of the church.

(32:25):
Yeah for sure, right, but there's probably someone you can
ask questions to and say, Okay, I'd like to talk
about these things that I've heard that I feel like
don't maybe line up with scripture. Now, the problem with
that is whoever's listening to this. You can't just be
a scripture googler who's going out and living your you know,
it's the wrong motive for you to have to sit

(32:46):
in church and try to analyze where the falsehoods are. Yeah, right,
the I have to be a person of the word.
But also the Bible says knowledge puffs up and love
builds up. So I have a responsibility in my own
situation to not be so full of knowledge that I
become judgmental of everything. Yeah right, and that's that's how
you step into being a pharisee. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, And I want to ask that question because that's
a really good point. I didn't even thought about that,
because like, what's the motive? You know, I mean, whenever
if you're sitting there weighing everything up. Because I also
think that there's this thought process that we bring and
it's been conditioned into us because everywhere we go, man,
we're consumers right like and like the customer is always right,
and so I know that if I go to Chick
fil A and they screw up my order, like when

(33:29):
I go back, it's not a matter of like we're
gonna argue over it. They're gonna make it right, man,
and they're gonna say, you know, my pleasure as well,
and probably give me something free, which is awesome.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
You know, I love it. I love That's the Lord's Chicken.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Now, when I go to church and like somebody says
something I don't like, well, I'm the dude I would
do if I went and tried something restaurant and I
didn't like their food, I would just go to another restaurant.
And I don't think people think about it that way
to them. I think we're so conditioned. I think it
becomes logical. And that's what I mean about like the
underlying belief of why you're at church, because like, look,

(34:00):
church has to be a place where people can come
in and they're there to receive because we have different
levels of maturity spiritually, and like, obviously, if you're spiritually immature,
one I don't know that you always know you are.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
But two you're there because you need to be fed.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Right, Maybe you're not maybe you don't really have much
of a strong relationship with God, or you don't have
an understanding of the Bible, and you know what great
you should be in church, but like how do you know,
how do you rectify these this kind of mentality that
you bring in without an understanding of what church is for?
And you like, where do we get to Because I'm

(34:34):
sitting here look at the question when is it okay
to leave church? Okay, we've established one reason if someone
is knowingly like twisting the truth against like going against
the word of God, okay, But then I would also say,
like who else is there? Because in Paul's time, he's
saying get that person out. He's not saying, y'all should
all just leave and go form another church, So like
there's still this commitment to each other. And that to

(34:56):
me is like where I think we've had things so complicated,
not just in church, but it's society that if you
look at like the history of humanity. We've gone from man,
we really need each other. So like I can live
in North Dakota, five hundred miles from anybody and just
order stuff on Amazon and have a drone drop it
to me. And I think that that's kind of symptomatic
of how a lot of people's experience of church has
gone as well, as that's become very individualized.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
I'll watch it at home, I'll stream my favorite preacher.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
I don't need to be a part of a church
to know God, because I've got a Bible and I've
got everything at my house.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
Like that's what I mean.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Like that, I don't know that people think about the
dynamic of why did Jesus actually say the church is
his institution?

Speaker 1 (35:33):
We live in a different I mean, the culture of
now is completely different than the first century. Right, It's
different than it was one hundred years ago. I mean
one hundred years ago, you probably weren't going to move
out of the city or born in right, I mean,
let's say two hundred years ago, but like two thousand
years ago, you're these people are going to be people

(35:56):
you see everywhere you go, right, Right, Like, whoever the
pastor of the church is, he's gonna live next to you,
and his kids are going to be living next to
you one hundred years from now. So you don't have
the luxury of just unfollowing and going and building an
echo chamber. Right, you don't have the luxury in that.
And and I'm not just talking about Church, I'm just

(36:17):
talking about in general, like that time in history, and
and even one hundred and fifty years ago, two hunred
years ago. You don't have the luxury of just never
seeing these people again and going somewhere else. I mean,
like these people are your neighbors, They're they're people you
work with every day. Because you're not driving places. You're
not there's not like you're walk like in the first

(36:38):
century Church, You're you're you know, people didn't even own livestock.
You're you're walking place. Every everywhere is walking distance. So
how far away can you really get from somebody? Right?
I mean so so you had to you had to.
And I think it's a skill that we've lost in
general and culture, is this ability to uh to uh

(36:59):
comp in the right ways. Like people have become so
uncompromising of everything where it's just you know, especially in America,
I mean there's so many great things about America, but
one of the one of the silliest things to me
about America is people that are American thinking that having
it my way, everywhere I go and every and in
everything I do is some kind of right that's been

(37:22):
given to me by God. So it's like in the church.
So like I'll address these like first two things, so
the loss of faith or doubt in religious teachings, and
then conflicts over the social or moral issues. So if
you go to church, if you go to this is
the fundamental idea of a church is about pleasing God.

(37:44):
It's not about pleasing you. Right, So Jesus establishes the church,
and then he says, here's the mission of my church.
So Jesus, no matter who your pastor is or what
some guy is that you know, wears a special cloak
that teaches you he's not the leader of the Churchjesus
is the leader of the church. And then Jesus says,
and God says all throughout Scripture, here's what's important, and

(38:05):
here's how you need to think, and here's how you
need to approach your life. And so then what we
do is either one of two things happen. Either number one,
Like people lose faith in this teaching because the teaching
is not really truthful. So there's all of this stuff
of what's called the attractional church model that you can google,
where the focus of churches has become let's make it

(38:27):
as easy as possible for people, right, And that has
never been Jesus' intention. It is not like Jesus says
you can't follow me in Luke chapter fourteen. He says,
you can't follow me unless you give up everything that
you own. The Bible says in the Book of Hebrews, right,
it says crucify your flesh. So this is what following.
This is what following Jesus really is. But the problem

(38:50):
is we don't preach. We don't preach following Jesus as
the hardest thing you've ever done. We preach it as
the easiest thing you've ever done.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah, salvation at the endpoint for.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
A lot of people. Son, And when it gets hard,
people go, I don't believe in this anymore because it's
supposed to be easy. It's like, well, that's not their fault.
That's not the person who has the crisis of faith
because they never knew that bad things would happen when
they were a Christian. They've been taught wrong, right then.
The second thing is that people have conflicts with the
church over social or moral issues, Like people diverge from

(39:22):
the church based on the truthful biblical beliefs of what
that church believes because they see those things as archaic.
And this isn't just in like the recent cultural history
says LGBT issues. But it's not just that. It's things
like cohabitating. It's things like walking in forgiveness whenever you
don't want to forgive. It's I mean, there's all kinds

(39:44):
of different things that people go, you know, I just
have conflict with that, Like a lot of people, truthfully
have conflict. This is one of the issues that we
have in Christianity today. A lot of people have issues
with the fact that churches are graceful to people, that
a person can fall and make misas and and do
something totally stupid, and that there can be a restorative

(40:05):
process where they're they're restored back into something. Like people
have a problem with that because they think, well, once
a person makes a mistake or on a once a
it's not just church leaders. This is just true in
churches once you do something wrong, you're disfellowshipped like permanently. Right.
This is completely antithetical to restoring to what Paul talks about.
That's restoring someone back, like if you have the opportunity

(40:28):
to do that. And so so the real the to me, man,
the real root of If you go, oh, what's the
root of all this, it's pride. It's it's the same
thing that we were dealing with in the garden, and
it's us looking at you know, I think if you
got a pastor and you got a leader who's so
sure of everything that they're saying, and they're they're never

(40:50):
wrong and they're never human, that's not great. Right. But
also if you have a person sitting out there in
the audience and they just have a judgmental eye towards
everything that's happen happening and everything has to be perfect
and everything has to be exactly the way that they
think it should be, Well, that's that's just as pridefuls
as the person who is the person who they're describing

(41:12):
as prideful.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, that's that's such an interesting way of looking at
it too. Man, is like I don't really thought about
the disfellowship and people having problems with restoration, because that
is literally the foundation of our faith is that we
all need it, Savior, we all need to be restored.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, well, and I've seen I mean, like I said,
man when we started, I mean, I've seen. I've seen
this stuff my whole life. I've seen both sides of it.
Like I've seen people do really awful things, and I've
seen the people walk through that that are still in
the church, that are still walking through the restored, like
trying to wrap their head around how this person could

(41:48):
still be a part of the church because that person
hurt me so bad. But this is where we have
to lean into God, I think in the context of
that and go man, like God, maybe God won't restore
our relationship, we can walk in forgiveness, right. And I've
seen the other side of it, like I've seen abuses
by leaders. I've seen different things that people have done
that's just absolutely wrong where they've taken advantage of it.
And that's and that's one of the reasons why people

(42:10):
leave churches because they get disillusioned, like the church is
hypocritical and there's there's scandals all throughout the church, there's
all these breaches of trust. I mean, like, what's the
most recent one? Right, there's always some news story about
some pastor or some church leader doing something that's just
totally out of pocket. And the question for us as individuals, okay,

(42:31):
like we can look at and this is what people
are so great at doing, right, They're so great at
looking at the thing and saying that, you know, what
needs to happen, This whole thing needs to change. Yeah,
And my question is what can you control? Because you
can't control that. What you can control is you, So
what you can control if you have a problem with
unethical people, what you can control is how ethical you are.

(42:55):
You can't control how ethical they're going to be. Right,
if you have a problem with a church that's not
being relational, or you know, environment that's not being whatever
way you think it should be, go be the person
who builds that kind of environment, and you can build
it in that church or the great thing is really honestly,
I mean, I know you kind of mentioned that people
shouldn't do this, but a person can goes start their

(43:15):
own thing, right, you know, and a person can go, Okay,
like I've got these ideas, I've got this vision, and
there's nothing wrong with that. But at the same time,
I think starting anything in cynicism and in negativity. And
this is the danger that you and I run into
with having criticisms, is you can be known a lot
more for what you're against than what you're for, which

(43:37):
is what the church in America does not realize that
they've done to themselves. So the Church in America has
become great at being known for what they're against. Right,
Because the number four reason why people leave the church
is because churches have become too political. And I say
that as a part of a church's you know, pretty

(43:59):
political like we we you know, our pastor talks about
it a lot. Yeah, right, and people have an opinion
that about that. Right, So what we have to do
right is and I'd go down that whole road, but
what we have to do is be the kind of
people that fundamentally, I think at first we decide with intention,

(44:23):
here's how I'm going to live. Because here's the real problem.
For me. The real problem is not the reasons why
people leave the church. The real problem is the kind
of generating factor behind those reasons. And I think the
generating factor behind those reasons is this Uh. There's a
recent statistic done by Barna where ninety four percent of

(44:45):
Christians don't have a biblical worldview right right six percent?
Only six percent of Christians have a biblical worldview. According
to this study, only thirty seven percent of pastors do. Right.
So we have a crisis of people. You cannot live
by God's word if you don't know God's word. I
don't know how people in their mind can I don't

(45:10):
know how they can bridge the gap so to speak of.
I believe all of this. I believe in what Jesus says.
I believe in being a Christian, but I don't know
anything about what the Word says and call themselves a
Christian because I think that number one problem, the number
one reason why people leave the church is because they

(45:32):
don't read the Word. And because I think about what
you and I can actually own, Like I can't own
if the church gives me enough faith, I can't own
if the Church teaches me correctly. What I can own
is my own personal level of revelation and knowledge. And
what I also have the ability to do is go
find a place. What we call it is find your tribe. Right,

(45:53):
you go find a place with people who you want
to be around. That's what the church. There's so many
different things the church is about, but that's one of
the things that the church is about. Jesus said, the
great commission of the Church is to go into all
the world and teach them to obey and observe everything
that I've commanded you to do. So the responsibility of

(46:14):
every Christian, not the responsibility of the pastor, but it
is the responsibility the pastor. The responsibility of every Christian
is to go teach people what God has taught you
through your own life. Right, So there comes this time,
and this is I think a thing, a dynamic that
I've observed a lot throughout the course of my life.

(46:34):
There comes this time in a person's life where they
leave a church. And this is like another reason why
people leave church. They'll leave a church because they're not
getting fed anymore. Yeah, that's a common say, right, it's
a common thing. I need to go somewhere else. The
teaching needs to be deeper, the worship needs to be
more annointed than you know, whatever people say, there comes

(46:55):
a time. This is the way I'll say it. There
comes a time in your life, your walk with God.
Where the church isn't about you. And what I mean
by that is is the church is like what we
see it as is the church is an equipping station.
The church is a development station. The church is where
you set the foundation for your life. The church is
not the be all end all the relationships that you

(47:17):
build can be. But if you find yourself sitting in
a church going I'm not getting fed here, you're probably
an obese Christian. And I don't mean physically obese. I
mean you've been taught so much and there's so much
that you know. But the thing is are you teaching
that to other people? Are you helping other people develop

(47:38):
their own theology as it as it relates to not
just their personal theology, but as it relates to what
Scripture teaches. Are you a part of? And that's what
the church. That's one of the things that the church is.
The church is this gathering of people who are striving
with the best of their ability to honor God, to
love God, to serve God, and to love each other.

(48:00):
I mean, there's really two things. If you want to go, okay,
what's what's a biblical church? Do the number one thing
Jesus said in Matthew, chapter twenty three. He gave us
the great commandment. You know, love God with all your heart, soul, mind,
and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. This is
the fulfillment of all the law. Right, in all the
history of philosophy, Jesus was the only person who said
to love your enemies. He's the only like the these people.

(48:22):
There's a there's a philosophy book somewhere sitting here on
my desk, and I was reading this philosophy book the
other day that that in the in this guy's a
secular philosophy guy. He said, the thing that challenges philosophers
so much about what Jesus said is that he said
to love your enemies. Yeah, right, there is the ethic
of love in the context of following Jesus cannot I

(48:46):
don't think it can be overstated. No, I agree, right,
But then there's the second thing. So one is, here's
how you should behave, right, Like, here's how you should
behave You should always do things in love. Let everything
you do be done in love. Then the second thing
is there's a mission that you have. If you call
yourself a Christian, there's a mission that you have it's
called the great it's called the great commission. And your commission,

(49:08):
like in the military, when you get your commission, that
means you now have your orders to go fulfill the mission.
Like here's what you're gonna go do. Here's your job
in the military. Right, So you've been commissioned as a
follower of Jesus to teach people to obey everything that
God's commanded you. So whether that's your family, your friends,
the people that are in your church, the opportunity that
you and I have in a local church is to

(49:29):
be a part of helping other people understand discipleship. And
there's nothing I think I think for me, you know,
because there's other reasons that are good reasons for people
to leave the church, like if people are morally abusive,
like if the leadership of that church is immoral. You know,
if you've if you've seen leaders be have moral failure

(49:53):
and be unrepentant, like I'm reminded of with all due respect,
it's a real story. I mean, I didn't make it up.
So Jim Swagger, you know, he got caught twice with
a prostitute and the first time he apologized, and the
second time he said you could watch a video of
this on YouTube. He said to his church, he said,
God told me it's none of your business. That's probably

(50:16):
that's probably a time, you know, when, with all due respect,
it's okay to leave a church, because when a person
has unrepentant moral failure, they're probably not leading from the
right place. Right when there's unresolved to vision, or like
a lack of unity in the context of that church,
or there's a neglect of biblical worship, like a church
drifts from sound doctrine. I mean, all these things require

(50:38):
notice that, all these things, and you could get a list,
but all these things require a level of spiritual maturity
from us, which I don't know about you, Nick, Most
of the people I've known that leave churches, I would probably
not define them as the most spiritually mature people. You know.
And there's nothing there's nothing wrong with being spiritually immature.
There is something wrong with staying that way. So so

(51:01):
the thing we have to admit to ourselves, right here's
here's the great thing. One of the great things to
me about this season of history is we don't live
in a community where we just can walk and there's
only one church to go to you know, we don't.
We don't. We're not just locked into like this actual
literal tribe that we're with. We can go pick people

(51:23):
that we want to be with, we can pick people
that we want to be aligned with, but there does
have to come a time in our life where we
choose our tribe. And that's where we lock in right, right,
the Bible says those who are planted in the house
of the Lord will flourish in the courts of our
God and that and that refers to the Temple and
the Old Testament. But the idea is exactly the same
that when you get around, you know, when you get

(51:44):
around the right people, and you have to be a
part of And that's and that's back to what I
was saying a second ago about deconstruction. So the idea
of deconstruction is we have to strip back all this
stuff from the church and basically get to the point
where we remove all of these things from the church
that we see as bad, but not everything that's a

(52:05):
part of the church is bad. But we remove all
of the structure and then we rebuild. But the problem
is you're going to build the next thing that needs
to be broken down, right, there's just this cycle of
history of construction reconstruction. I mean, the Protestant Reformation happened
in the Catholic Church because of what the Catholics were doing.
Then there was something called the counter Reformation that the Catholics,

(52:27):
because of the Reformation, went and did their own reformation.
I mean, it's all throughout history, and that's just like
not something we're ever going to change, I feel like,
because there's humanity in the Church, and that's on one hand,
it's such a messy thing and it's such a hard
thing for us to deal with, but it's also such
a beautiful thing because it shows that, even over two

(52:48):
thousand years of history, it shows that in the midst
of our own flaws, failures and sins as people within
the church, you're a leader in the church. I'm a
leader in the church. In the midst of all that,
God continues to move forward in the lives of people.
And I think being a person who doesn't put people

(53:08):
on a pedestal helps that. I mean, being a person
who doesn't it's it's just no matter what a person's
title is, or what their rank is, or what their
level of education is, they are their pastor or whoever
their apostles so and so they are just as human
as all of us, and they're trying just as hard

(53:29):
to figure it out. And God, God, ourdains and establishes authority, right,
Your dains and establishes authority. But at the same time,
that doesn't mean that that authority is always right or
always correct, you know.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
So that's a man that's a loaded statement.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
I was going to say, I want to kind of
get to the point of landing the plane here, but
I I want I think it's really important to note
what you just said because one of the things that
Garrett said that one time that I've always held with
me is you talked about how God shows to work
through humans, right, And it's like he could have he
could have given his image to anybody, he could have
given the mission to anybody, but he chose to work

(54:07):
through humans, knowing full well, you know, he knows what's
in our heart.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
More than more than even we do.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
And so it's like, when you look at all like
what you just said, it's like, okay, so what if
the point of all this isn't to get it right,
because that's a very human thing. Is It's like, oh,
when we get it right, then everything it's like right,
and that's exactly what we want. So so last last
thing and then we can. I would scone a little
bit longer than maybe even I thought we would, but
I feel like we could keep going, so.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
A deep, deep, deep cunt right here.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Man, No, I know, but I'm glad that we've unpacked
it because I look, I agree with what you said
that you get to a point of maturity, because that's
how I feel about where we're at at ELC. My
wife and I have been there for five years. We
know we're supposed to be there, you know. I'll just
say on the podcast where And actually had a vision
of the inside of the cathedral when we were at
Bible College and the cathedral wasn't even built. So the

(54:54):
first time we came to the church, I wasn't even
serving God. I was just there to make friends because
we'd moved to a new city. And and says she
walked in the cathedral and she she like had this,
oh my gosh, like deja vu, like this is the
picture I saw over twenty years ago.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
I didn't know that. It's just amazing.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Yeah, I mean, what a gracious thing for God. To
kind of give us the heads up, like you're supposed
to be here now on top of that. But I
look at like, okay, so we're in there. I look
at it and I go, okay, I'm so aligned with you.
I'm so align with Gara, I'm so aligned with like,
you know, I could list off my friends, but it
wouldn't actually make a sense to anybody. I Mean, these
are men that I'm like, I'm gonna do the rest
of my life. We're committed to kingdom, We're committed to
building God's kingdom, and like we're definitely imperfect, but we're

(55:30):
committed to each other, and we're committed to the Lord
now in that, and I very much come with the
same attitude I'm there to serve. Like I don't come
in and go like I didn't get fed today. I mean,
you know, the different things I've been involved in, it's
not worth listing on here by any stretch. But the
point is my attitude is I'm like, I'm here to serve.
And if I'm here to serve, that means I'll do
whatever it takes. I don't need to have certain conditions
or it has to be something I like, you meet

(55:52):
me a shovel, a bunch of poop in the back,
give me a shovel, man, Like, I'm here for it.
So here's so having that level of commitment and then like,
cause you gave the Jimmy Swagger an example, how do
you think people should.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
Respond to that?

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Cause, like, let's say, you know, somebody in our midst
as committed as we are. That happens because I'll be
honest me, I'm not leaving. I'm gonna say we either
need to remove this person or like you know, but
like because that would be me walking away from people
that I'm in such a deep committed like lifelong I
would say covenant with like I've literally given my word

(56:24):
I'm here.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Yeah, well I think it's this, It's there's there's another
side to that too, of like what do you do
whenever you're committed like that to a church or to
an environment and the people that you love aren't there anymore? Yea,
you know, I mean, that's that's been a lot of
my experience. I mean, I've I've been a part of
our church. We started a church in twenty it's twenty
twenty five. I've been a part of our church for
twenty five years. I don't agree with everything that we do.

(56:47):
You know, I understand a lot of people's criticisms that
have that have been in relationship with I understand people's
criticisms of me, you know. I mean I've been a
part of making decisions and doing things that have not
been great, you know, for certain people and not not.
You know, you can have sincere motives and be sincerely
wrong at the same time, and that's that's just that's

(57:07):
just true humanity. I mean, think about being a parent.
You know, you're not You're not right every time with
your kids, and that's and that's and that's a picture
of God ordaining authority. Like you didn't ask to be
put in authority over these children. I mean you kind
of did, right, I mean, you know what, you know
what it means when you practice having kids, so you're
gonna eventually probably have one. But but but you don't

(57:29):
take into account when you have a child the level
of responsibility that hits you as it relates to how
you live your life now. Right, there's certain things that
you were fine with before that all of a sudden
are not okay because of how your kids are going
to perceive that. On on I you go, That's what
it's like being a leader of any kind. You know,

(57:49):
is that God makes you responsible and uh, the truth
is a lot of Hebrews thirteen seventeen is one of
my favorite scriptures for being a leader of any kind,
and it says, obey your leaders and submit to them.
That's the usually the part people love the most. But
the second part, the second part is the most important
part for leaders. It says, for they keep watch over
your soul. And I think if a leader doesn't understand

(58:14):
the responsibility that they have to watch over people's souls,
they're not a good leader, at least spiritually, they're not.
And I say that as a person who in different
times in my life has not has not really understood that.
So I think that there's there's this, there's this back
and forth like balance to that right, and navigating these
things is kind of like navigating ethical dilemmas in your life.

(58:36):
It's like, what do you do? What are you supposed
to do? Well, you know the decision you would make right,
but that decision comes from a place of knowing what
your values are and knowing what matters most to you,
knowing what matters most to your family, knowing the principles
that you operate and live by. I think the thing
that you know. And this isn't even about the church,

(58:59):
it's about life, but it also is about how people
treat church, because the way people are with something like
a church is a microcosm of how people live their life. Right, Yeah,
I agree. And people are spending their lives they're looking
for certainty. And one of the things that we have
to admit at some point in our life is life
is a very uncertain thing. There is no such thing

(59:20):
as certainty in terms of outcomes. There's no such thing
as certainty in terms of relationships. There's no such things
in terms of certainty with anything that I can't control.
But I can be certain about what I do. I
can be certain about what my approach is going to be.
And that's why people whenever they experience change or difficulty,

(59:43):
the reason why it freaks them out so much is
because the truth is they're not certain about who they are.
Like the reason why people will experience a moral failure
and a pastor and it will blow up their whole
theology and cause them to not just leave a church,
like leave an individual church, leave the church is because
their faith was not based in their personal relationship with Jesus.

(01:00:05):
Their faith was based in the idolatry of worshiping a man,
and that's where their faith came from. So as soon
as that like a big question to whether or not
you have the right kind of certainty is what can
cause you to lose your faith? Like, at this point
in my life, nothing could cause me to lose my faith.
Number one, because I know what it's based on, right.
I know it's based on the unchanging, immovable, unshakable word

(01:00:28):
of God, and I'm going to live by that no
matter what. But the second thing is because I've done
I've done that, I've watched God work in my life before. Right. So,
the way to navigate uncertainty, like uncertainty in a church
and certainty in a family and certainly in your business
is to just be really certain about who you are.

(01:00:51):
You know who God is and who God is, and
when you have absolute clarity on that, and the only
way to get certain on who God is is to
read the Word. Only way to get certain on who
you are is to focus on is to read the
Word and also focus on the kind of principles you
want to live by and the And the thing about
developing that kind of approach to life is you what
it does in all of us. I know what it's

(01:01:13):
done for you. Nick. What it's done for me is
when uncertainty happens to me, I can be certain because
I know how I'm going to respond to uncertainty. Right,
that's a superpower. That's a that's a it's a it's
a to use Garrett's language, it's a total unlock in
our life. Where where I can experience uncertainty in the church,

(01:01:36):
I can experience I don't know if this guy's a hypocrite,
I can experience a change in teaching, and I know
how I'm going to respond to that. I know what
my perspective is going to be on that. I know
how valuable relationships are to me. And everybody's got to
have their own answer to that question. But the thing,
if you're a believer and you're listening to this, the
thing that matters is at some point you've got to

(01:01:58):
find your tribe. Right. We were built for relationships, we
were built to do life with people. It's it's okay
and reasonable and understandable. If the last place, so the
last ten places weren't the right place. But find the
right place, and once you're in the right place, don't
leave for don't leave for petty reasons. Don't don't leave.

(01:02:21):
Don't leave for even like big reasons. But if the
principles shift in that place, you have to you have
to embrace the uncertainty of that and step into the new.
But most of us, the real reason, I mean, the
truth is man, and I've because i've I've seen it again.
Like I said, I've seen both sides of it, and
this is where I can personally land the plane today.

(01:02:42):
The truth is for me, ninety nine point nine percent
of people who are leading in the church do not
have wrong motives, and they're not false teachers, and they're
not trying to rip people off, and they're not trying
to destroy people right. Their motives are in the right place,
and they're just improperly, improperly applying whatever it is that

(01:03:05):
they know. Okay, So the question you and I have
to answer is how much grace are we willing to
give those people? And and that's that's that's that's not
something I can say what the answer is, that's just
your decision to make. As it relates to the personal
relationships that you have. How much grace am I willing
to give to this past or how much grace am
I willing to give to this leader? How much grace
am I willing to give to this church? And if

(01:03:26):
it becomes too much, then just trust God with whatever
the next alignment is. Right, That's that's completely understandable because
huge human relationships are so messy and sometimes despite our
best motives and despite our best efforts, we blow stuff up.
And that and that includes how churches act and how
leaders act. That that doesn't that doesn't excuse them. But

(01:03:47):
also it's like, how graceful, how graceful can you be
towards towards people who are very imperfectly trying to live
out you know, their own thing. And this is why
Scripture tells us to work out our own salvation with
fear and trembling. And I think that's if you're doing that,
you know, like, if you're doing these things, if you're

(01:04:08):
living a virtuous life, if you know your core values
and you're living according to them, and you're looking at
your life and you're saying, I'm going to control all
my controllables and I'm not going to be a person
that blames. I'm gonna be a person that takes responsibility
for my own life. And you get to this place
where you're like, man, I have a reverence for God
and i have a fear of the Lord, and I'm
just gonna work out my own salvation with fear and trembling.

(01:04:28):
And you still feel like you're probably in the wrong place. Well,
then you probably are in the wrong place, but that's
your decision to make. But you but there are there
is a right place to be, you know, but there's
but there's also no perfect place. So somewhere at some point,
it's like this is true about getting married, right, I mean,
if you had this perspective on getting married, and I'm
going to marry the perfect person and i can find

(01:04:50):
someone who I'm never going to fight with and We're
always going to be happy and everything is going to
be wonderful and my feelings are never going to be
hurt and I'm never gonna have a bad day with
this person. It's completely impossible. It's you have to you
have to not settle for somebody. You have to decide
right this person right here? This is it, Like I'm

(01:05:12):
locked in. I'm not going anywhere. We're gonna we're gonna
figure this out together. We're gonna fight the good fight.
And that's really biblically what the relationship to a tribe
is and what what a covenant community like a church
is is. It's an environment where you go. You know what,
as long as I know to the best of my
ability that these people are trying to rightly divide the word,

(01:05:33):
and that these people that I'm around, and I'm not
making about the organization and making about the people, these
people that I'm around are trying to work out their
own salvation with fear and trembling, then hey, I'm willing
to work it out with them and embrace the and
embrace the humanity of that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Yeah, that's so good man. I gotta be honest, I
did this. Did not go where I thought we would go.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
And I actually really like that because I'm walking away
from her and I'm going, Okay. Number one like no God, right,
Like number one, No God, You've got to seek him yourself.
When you seek God, It's amazing how he brings the
right people and the right things into your life. Like
when you get your life in God's order, he brings flow,
find your tribe, plant your flag with that tribe, walk
in grace. If I could sum up in three steps

(01:06:16):
like that, like rather than giving you like a hard fast,
here's when you can leave, here's when you can't. It's
those three things. It's no God, find your tribe, plant
your flag. I guess that would be number three, and
then number four is walk in grace.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Because the reasons ultimately at the end of you know,
I heard I heard I think it was Dennis howitt
Ley or Brian Tracy heard Brian Tracy say this. At
the end of the day, you got reasons or you
got results. And when you're looking for reasons to leave something,
you're not worried about results. And I want to have,
Like the Great Commission, it's about results. It's not about reasons.

(01:06:48):
You can go to heaven. The Bible tells us about Jesus. Jesus,
you're gonna go to heaven and go, well, we cast
out demons in your name, we did all this stuff
in your name, and he's going to say I didn't
know you, right, So there's results. There's a result I
have to get. So the Great Commission and the Great Commandment,
those are the results I have to get in my life,
and I can have reasons that I didn't do that,

(01:07:09):
I can have reasons that I don't pursue that I
can have. You know, I think when a person is thinking,
what are my reasons for leaving the church, and what
are my reasons for leaving my wife? And what are
my reasons for not being a good father, and what
are my reasons for not doing this? And well, what
you're saying is I don't care about results. I just
care about my reasons because I feel comfortable with this.
And just my encouragement to everybody is do those things

(01:07:32):
that Nick said, but also just don't be a reasons person,
Like don't don't be a person that you're looking for
a reason or you need a reason. Just be a
person that's like I know who I am and I'm
gonna roll how I roll no matter where I'm at.
And you find your tribe, and you find the right
people to do life with and the right people to
be around, and the right people to build the people
that you know, because some of the people in the
tribe that you need to be in are the people

(01:07:53):
that God's called you to reach that only you can reach.
And when you do that you set your yourself up
to not be happy, not to be fed as a consumer,
you set yourself up to live a fulfilling life, which
is the life that God's created us to live.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
Thank you very much for listening.

Speaker 5 (01:08:13):
Guys, remember to share, like subscribe.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
If you think that this.

Speaker 5 (01:08:17):
Would be something that someone would enjoy, please send it
to them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
We appreciate it all.

Speaker 5 (01:08:21):
If you want to get in touch, you can follow
us on Instagram at the Impossible Life. You'll find us
on there.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
You can also email.

Speaker 5 (01:08:27):
At Impossible Life Podcasts at gmail dot.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Com if you have any questions.

Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
If you want to get in touch and find out
about Carrett's personal or business coaching, that's the way to
do it. Thank you again for listening. Go out there
and think better and live the impossible. You see again soon.

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227. When Is It Time to Leave Your Church? (And When It's Just Your Pride Talking)

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