Elders' Panel on Fellowship
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
So at least I didn't prepare any questions. Jonathan usually has half a dozen just in his back pocket ready to go. But for as long as we have questions or for half an hour. Andy, you got a question? What ways would we as elders like to see our body grow in fellowship? I would love to see a higher percentage of participation on Sunday evenings and in family fellowship. That's practical. So the question is how to get to that. I was thinking about that in during Sean's talk as well. So yes, this is all well and good. How do we compel someone to do the dirty work to cultivate fellowship with his brother? when the difficulty of it is not a bug but a feature.
So how do we make it alluring or enticing so that those people, because I mean, if we're being candid, a number of people who were not here tonight would have benefited from hearing. Some of the things that were said tonight, and I mean, you all need to hear it too, so do I. But there are no doubt others who are thinking, Dang, it'd be awesome to have all those folks here tonight to hear it. But a lot of times it's a matter of getting us from, I think I may have said in my talk a couple of times, to believe what you know, to go ahead and practice what it is that you're already convinced of. That is, yes, fellowship is important and man, I'm just really introverted.
Or the weeks, I work late and the weeks are hard and Sunday nights are the only night I get to maybe reboot, reset, blah, blah, blah. There are legitimate demands in Christ for our time. And how do we act and what we know is good. So, but two practical things where I would love to see more people taking advantage of even those two gift-wrapped fellowship opportunities on Sundays. No doubt there are others for, you know, Life to Life or Men of Entrititis 2 as well, but those are the first that came to my mind were the two Sunday ones. Basically, it's the same old thing I always say, more one-on-one discipleship with people.
As you grow out of the festivities, I think that, like Jonathan said, first you come Sunday morning, then Sunday night, then life to life. After that, though, the whole point of it is to break it down where you're actually meeting one on one with somebody and really taking it to that next level. And as you do that, Soul skivvies? Yeah, down to your skivvies. And you can even do it with a coffee. Bathrobe. Yeah, your daughter said she was looking up after I had put the painting of Socrates up there in his bed with people gathered around him, listening to him talk. She was like, hmm, I wonder if my dad and Socrates have some similarities.
Wait a minute. Philip was the first one to see me after the operation he came in. He got to see the scar and everything, didn't you, Philip? Probably more than you needed to see, right? And we hadn't had hot water for like eight days at that point. He's going to need something stronger than coffee to wash that out of his mind.
So you want to see one on one. Jonathan wants to see participation in some of the trellis we already have. Jim, wasn't like that participate in the trellis. That's really necessary. Jim wasn't singing nights or it's, there's a, a uniting that happens when we get it right. And then the demonstration of it in the bigger service in the morning is always a Brings a smile to your face, you know you go. Whoa, we really rock that one your mic is on but it works better Jim was it like the last half of your message all about a Particular kind of way that fellowship could be better even in our body. What would you have any specifics on?
on what the older with the younger looks like. I'm assuming you see younger would reach out to older and potentially older would reach out to younger, whether that's for a family's fellowship night or one-on-one or something like that. So do you have more painting of that picture you could do or something else? It certainly involves what you just described.
Yeah, I just think a fellowship is something that's supposed to be very organic within a church that you don't necessarily have to program it, schedule it. That, I mean, to me, in ideal situations, we wouldn't have to have any trellis except for maybe Sunday corporate worship and maybe a Sunday night service because the rest of the body life is so dynamic and so rich. No need to schedule it. But then across those lines, all the different fences I described, in our church, I think the intergenerational is something we can do better at.
I think, I would say our ladies do a better job of taking those life on life types. Some of that's because if they're at stay at home moms or whatever, it's a little bit easier. For us guys, we put in our eight, 10, 12 hour days and we just wanna come home and do nothing.
I mean, even our min to min participation, in our program that's not as well taken advantage of as it should be. So I guess just seeing people enjoying getting together and it gave me just doing life together but in the course of that there's the interaction there's a sharing of stories encouraging one another. Yeah I just I just you know get concerned I think of our children grow up in a culture where church is more associated with sort of a duty and a segment of my life and it's just not woven into the fabric of our life. Do things when they get older become attractive and distract them and pull them away and they just lose interest and I'm looking for a vitality. For the guys the Kiparian camaraderie is an activity that I think is very very valuable because again it's very organic, it's very unstructured, it's pretty wild and crazy, you never know what we're gonna talk about, but it's real, you know, and it knits guys hearts together. So those kinds of activities, it's not complicated what I'm advocating, but it
does require time and effort and care, you know, what does it mean for me to be a part of the building of the body of itself and love and some I just think that's more than showing up on Sunday morning and of, you know, two or three other programmed activities that the church has. So Jim while you still have a microphone I have a follow-up for you related to your talk. You took aim, you rattled off a laundry list of offenses that are legit and then in this interest of time you attacked one of them that is the intergenerational one. What did that edge out so if you had to tick off one or two more what would you say are our kind of biggest or most glaring problem areas?
What other fences would compete for that top spot? You're saying within our body? Sure. Yes. Well, we're mostly lily white, so probably ethnicity is not too big of an issue. First Terrence. I feel like I'm running a person. Huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, brother, you know, I've told you, I've been praying for the Russians to invade us for a long time, so that's awesome. Besides, we already saw a Rocky V, so we know who wins. That was because my son told me that the Russians were awesome at community and body life, and so I took that to be true. So I've been praying for you guys for a long time. I'm not sure if I have a ready answer for you, what other, specific in the context of our church.
I would like to see just our men in general taking more of that opportunity outside of the program times to get together. To again, and guys, we fellowship differently than the ladies. We're not going to sit down over a pot of tea. We're going to go build a deck or do something. But get together and spend time together. and then the generational thing I already talked about. Okay, somebody else? Okay, dad, while they're thinking, if we could have titled your talk, How Not to Rabbit Trail Your Fellowship, in my mind, that would have been the same kind of thing as How Not to Free Will Your Fellowship, because I still remember when we were talking as elders at a meeting about what our topics were going to be.
And you were pretty fired up about not coasting, and you let off your discussion about fellowship as well related to not coasting, not getting the wrong kind of comfortable. So, like, talking to people in your bathrobe, you would say is the right kind of comfortable, but there's another kind of comfortable where... I think you would say then you're not actually growing and you're not dealing with sin and maybe even in the First Timothy four sense, making progress that's evident to all. So there's a way where you can make your arrangements like you were saying with other people and you don't really then make progress in the faith.
And yeah, at the same time, you are just as a person, as a person, you're not really agenda-driven either. So you are one of the least agenda-driven people that I know and really happy to go with the flow. Whatever's happening is part of what makes talking with you and people who meet with you never the same game twice, because I mean, you're gonna talk about whatever's happening that day or whatever they have questions about and you're great with that, you're not really ever worried about trying to get to a particular point. You're happy to meander on all of the different things.
So if you were describing how somebody could be relaxed and comfortable in a good sense, while also then not falling into the comfort of never making any progress or dealing with real issues, if you could describe that tension a little bit more and how to navigate that tension of we're relaxed in our conversation, we're not just filling in the blanks of our Bible study per se, we're relaxed in our conversation, not an agenda, but we're also, we still have a goal in mind, could you describe that tension or that balance or how you do that, how you see that playing out? Yeah, it's always different with each person that you meet.
We're all individuals with different backgrounds and stuff and even meeting with Philip and Max, two brothers, they both come at things very differently. I think the first thing that you do as you meet with somebody, I like dumping the load about me. So they say, well, he's kind of old and crazy and done a lot of things. So I want them to be comfortable to say with whatever they want to say. Because until you get off that Christianese thing or just talking theology, kind of trading, well, I know this and you know that and see how we're all bonding together. It takes a little time before somebody says, you know what, I'm really pissed off about where I'm at or I don't like my job or, you know, I'm not going to leave my wife but I'm really not that satisfied and how do I make my this better or that better.
It takes time and the ability, I think, to listen to people for a while and not condone their unhappiness, but they have to feel comfortable enough to kind of dump the load on you. And then when that happens, then you can say things. And I always try to say it with an example like, I kind of understand where you're coming from because of this or that. that they go, oh, it's not so bad to be that way.
You know, when you meet with a bunch of young men, I mean, the first thing is always, you know, pornography and all I can think about is women. Well, you know, welcome to being a young man. You're, that's something that you have to conquer and get under control, but that's, you are not the most evil person that ever walked the planet because you're thinking that. God actually made you that way and you need to find a wife. And I immediately then attacked the society to have them understand that we have screwed up in a big way making you think you got to be, you know, 27 years old or whatever before you get married.
You know, get married and make a family, get it done, you know. And so that kind of thing. And so as you get to know people, you want them to, that's what I'm trying to get them to is at a point where they have an honest conversation about things. And I think a lot of times talking about work, even if I don't understand their work, or things they're struggling with, like especially Philip and Max, they have a lot of business decisions and, you know, should I go this way, should I do this, I have a talent for this, I have a dream to do that, is that wrong, should I try to follow my dream? You know, I love those kind of discussions.
I encourage most people, if they've got something they want to try, go out and try it. Don't be an idiot and spend all the money you have or something, but if you don't try it you'll never know and you could become a bitter old man at some point going, I knew I should have tried that. So if I was even summing some of that up, so let me sum up. You don't need an agenda of problems you want to point out that they have that need to be fixed. If you talk with them long enough, enough problems are going to surface that then you are actually then able to have the goal of working out those problems and their sanctification.
So that is always a, that program is always running. How can this person be sanctified? What you don't take in is your plan of how they need to get sanctified. You're happy hanging out, listening, and letting that surface rather than ... Yeah. In understanding what their viewpoint of that ... They know something's wrong, but they may have a viewpoint that would be different than mine. It might be a correct viewpoint from they know themselves better than I know them. I get to know them then I realize, oh, that person is somebody that wants everything organized to this, where another guy can be loosey goosey and let's just get her done and we'll find a way around that and don't worry about it.
So you have to also take into account that person's made this way, this guy's made that way and, you know, because everybody's different and the same cure for one guy is not the right cure for the other guy. and that kind of thing. Your comments made me think about another fence that I mentioned that I think is an issue where this is called the offense of not wanting to be wrong or like stupid. And we can see that happen in either our formal gatherings, where we're supposed to be discussing a book or something. And a lot of people will just sit back and, well, I'm thinking, and there's a fear of, I don't want to get the wrong answer.
But I think for fellowship to occur the way it's supposed to, there really needs to be a true given take back and forth, be willing to say things that are wrong. And then his iron sharpens iron, and we straighten that all out. I like to say there's no ways I heard to continue to leave the room. So there's time for that free flowing of discussion. So I think one way we can improve our fellowship, and I think even among our guys in our formal gatherings, is that willingness to kind of put your thinking out there for the other guys to take shots at or interact with. Because if it turns into just another teaching time, lecture time from the guys that are supposed to present the chapter, that's not profitable.
That's not fellowship. There needs to be two-way conversation. So I'd say, if you're the kind of person who just likes to always sit down and you say, well, I'm just a slow thinker, maybe you need to try and stretch yourself a little bit and be willing to put your thoughts out there earlier so that the group has a chance to interact. Because it may be that you say something that really sparks an important conversation. So I don't know if that makes sense, but just a more two-way conversation that goes on in our interactions will make for a better fellowship than just getting together and calling a fellowship where one person did all the talking and everybody else did all the listening.
Yeah, I think. You could have just confronted me later about that. I think one of the big things, if you're functioning as a pastor or a shepherd of the sheep, and you're in a group like that, and you'll notice that somebody is starting to speak up that maybe doesn't speak up a lot. And they might be seeing some stuff that's a little off, but they're attempting to tell the other people what they're thinking. I think it's the job of that shepherd is to make them comfortable in saying those things, and not just to jump down their throat. Now I'm not saying if somebody gets up and starts just blatant heresy, you know, stuff in Jesus' and God or something, but they're just saying, you know, all this predestination stuff really makes me feel uncomfortable.
I've never really thought about it, but I'm starting to think about it, and I just don't know what to do with it. That person is ripe to be shepherded along gently in that thing. They don't need the club over the head. And most of the time, the ones that need the club over the head, that's when you're one on one with them, not in a group. And the, oh yeah, I got a hole in them. But that encouragement allows people that have been around a long time to actually realize, you know what, the people do wanna hear what I'm thinking. Our group is very unique. Debbie has come and given her frustration with her condition.
She, it's good, you're getting better and all that, you just want it to be done. And sometimes your frustration comes out like that. The help that you've given Ron's mom in being able to understand and talk out where she was uncomfortable about talking out, and she's been in Christian groups for, my goodness, how many years, 50 years, 60 years or something? And really in top flight stuff in ministry, And she then has started to talk and wondering, oh, have I made a mistake by all those years? And then you get her aside and you can say, no, that was part of the process God had you in. And that kind of thing is really exciting.
But to the, if you just come to the group a couple times and see that, you may think, nothing's going on here. What's going on? These people are just kind of telling these stories. But what's happening, if you know the sheep, a lot of them are bearing stuff that they would never have said in another environment or a different place. And so, in that all, it's different in every group. I mean, every fellow, every life-to-life group has a different complexion. And you note that when different people come and other people don't come in the same group, the dynamic changes all the time. It's always a moving target.
All this helps us understand better how Dave can be completely contented when the meeting's supposed to end at nine o'clock, rolling a hand grenade in the room at 858. Then he's just about to detonate and he's like, well, time to go. Because when you enter with no agenda and you actually enter for the long haul, then you really can be okay if things are not tidy at the end. Yeah. Welcome to life. School was supposed to be all last week, right? Didn't work out, did it? Anybody have some from out there? Yeah, so Mark is asking, in case anybody didn't hear it or for the recording, in a family where more of the motto is, we've never found a hill not worth dying on, how would you perhaps go about triaging or identifying ones that, you know, in a practical way, maybe aren't worth dying on, and while still, because clearly you would say some are, you in particular, You would say some hills are worth dying on.
So how do you go about thinking of that? Did I summarize that good? Yeah, what I return to most commonly in my own thinking is what's of gospel importance. That's what's primary, and then what is secondary. And there are a lot of secondary doctrines that actually have practical implications. So when you have, for instance, the Calvinism, Armenianism debate, I actually don't around looking for people to debate in that discussion, and it's not because I am not a convinced five-point Calvinist. On one level, it's because I actually don't think there's much of a debate. I think Scripture is emphatically clear about it.
On another level, I believe there are going to be people who don't have their minds wrapped around that doctrine who are still going to get into heaven. And where I'm confronted with this on a pretty regular basis is as headmaster. When I'm telling families about our school, I say, well, we're absolute convinced Calvinists. And that is because we're predestinarians, affirming that God is sovereign and in control of everything. And so rather than just reducing Calvinism to the doctrine of predestination or divine election and stopping there as some are wont to do, we actually look at it as Jesus is Lord and God's in control of everything and that actually gives us a reason to wake up in the morning and to go about our work to be his ambassadors here and now.
So there may though be people from their pulpits at their home churches on a Sunday who would hear God's sovereignty affirmed in a different way. And I'm not going to lose sleep over that. So that is what we would call an in-house discussion. So if it is a conversation that Christians are having with other Christians, then that is more often than not going to be something worth sparring and sharpening one another, but not a hill worth dying on. So when it is a conversation that that will distinguish believers from unbelievers, those hills are absolutely worth dying on. Then it comes down to some pretty important decisions about how you're going to do church with other people who actually have a lot of agreement on secondary issues, what we can call secondary issues that have really significant implications.
And that's where the real fun begins. But so in at least in my thinking, what I return to a lot is what is what Paul called of first importance. So what is of gospel significance? And then what are other areas where Christians will disagree? So it's important to have a position on eschatology. It's important to have a position on church polity. But man, there are a lot of people who are way smarter than me who actually don't think the same way that I do about a lot of those things. And those would be what I would call secondary issues. I was voted most argumentative of my class in high school. Very surprising. I was distraught when I learned that my classmates had voted me as such.
Actually, I would have argued with them if they had chosen somebody else, I'm sure. And then when I got serious about theology, I started being around more militant kinds of Reformed Christians, you know, and there was always somebody who was wrong about the Bible, and therefore we should go fix that. And I embraced that and came to realize that a lot of men in particular were incapable of distinguishing enemies from allies. And so in many cases, their own children became the ones who needed to die on the hill. I was gonna, you know, the dad was gonna die on the hill arguing with his eight-year-old about her, you know, wrong view, and really creating an environment where everything was a fight even in the family.
And I came to think that a lot of Christians were fighting with each other because they weren't actually fighting with actual unbelief or rebellion. So they're taking out those energies that I actually think are good energies. The militant energy is fantastic when you're fighting an enemy. So like a husband and a dad who is unwilling to, you know, they're having dinner and a thief breaks through the front door. A dad who is unwilling to get up and, you know, use a weapon to fend off his family and protect them from the intruder is derelict in his duty. But he better set the baseball bat down when he goes back to the dinner table.
Like, that is not worth treating his family like they are also potential enemies. So being able to distinguish between who we actually are fighting against and who we're actually fighting with has caused me to need to fight a lot less battles because I'm actually like, I think a lot of preachers especially, see their flock as enemies. That's how they preach at them. Like you dummies are probably not even understanding anything that I'm saying and probably compromising and you're just wicked and evil, you know, and couldn't understand, you know, the simplest truths.
And preachers treat their own people like enemies. And that's because they have that energy or the readiness to fight, but they're not actually engaged where the fight should be. So, especially for more contrarian and fighty types, they definitely needs, they need to do that, but they need to make sure that they do that in the right places. I would follow that up by saying that as a shepherd, you know, and even piggybacking on something Dave said, when you actually know who you're talking to, to, well then I think you can, like as a shepherd, I like to find out what sort of hills I think that person actually needs to die on. Like if I have the energy and I, you know, and there's time and the person opens the door, I might be like, hmm, this is a person who could actually really, they would really be benefited by losing on that hill for being more like Christ if they lost on that. So I'm gonna fight on that regardless, you know, that's in a different kind of conversation than the secondary and primary level issues.
I would totally want to see somebody die on a second or third level issue if if they were holding onto it in a way that was preventing them from being more like Christ. I'd pick that fight. I would agree with that. Yeah. That's totally worth fighting for sake of shepherding that person who's actually dying on the wrong hill. And so in that sense, I mean, there is a way to embrace that. There's never been a hill that's not worth dying on. And especially for some people, yeah, man, it'd be good for them to die on that hill. And of course, that doesn't mean it wouldn't be good for me to lose on some hills either. Like, I'm sure there are hills I need to still, you know, get slaughtered on, as in my own making progress in Christlikeness.
So making sure that we are not fighting our own team in ways that is causing disunity. And sometimes that depends on the individual person, you know, that you need to know something about to know how they can handle and how they're going to receive it. So in a sense, yeah, everything is potentially worth fighting about if it is for their benefit. And that, and that is not like we're inerrant on being able to know that. But that definitely is a paradigm that I would sift it through is what, what would be beneficial for them? For them to have to fight and prove themselves and win that hill, or for them to have to fight and lose that hill, or for us to actually need to go together and fight somebody else.
I think there's a large number of us, well I shouldn't say us because I'm not one of them, a large number of people who don't like the fight, they don't like the spar, can't we just all love Jesus and call it a day. To them, I would say, and I use the word sparring, I mean, primary issues, yes, die on the hill. Secondary issues, you know, these guys have described when it might be worth dying on that hill. But there ought to be a lot of sparring dealing with differences, different secondary doctrinal views. I mean, we do that at the Kiparian camaraderie all the time. I mean, have we ever had a night yet where we all walked out of the room all agreeing on whatever else we're talking about.
And yet we have lots of vigorous sparring, but it's good natured, it's friendly. We walk out still brothers, we look forward to the next time we're going to get together. And I think that's beneficial, that's healthy. One of the topics we brought up often is forced me to go back. I'm doing a complete reread of the entire scripture and I'm documenting. I got 30 pages of notes already on one particular topic. Just you guys, the other guys that are in that group are shaking my thinking.
I mean, when I was shaking, are challenging my thinking, I'm realizing, oh, I can't give as informed an argument as I want to give for the view that I'm holding to. So that's good. That's good that you sit in the pew or causing an elder to go back and rethink and relick at stuff. That's profitable and that should be happening. So I would encourage lots of sparring, if you will, as long as it remains in that good-natured, friendly, we can walk away, we can agree to disagree. If we're all trying to get to what the truth of the word is, you know, that's what needs to be the goal, but recognize that we may not always arrive at the same point, certainly not at the same time on those discussions.
Yeah. Can you have, can, is the fellowship bettered by the sparks, or is the fellowship being burnt by the sparks and trying to be wise on knowing which is which is important because real good fellowship does come in the mess of figuring things out in our meat chunks. But we're not always enemies of each other. We're actually fellowshipping in, you know, the sparring disagreement. So is that scratching at what you're asking? OK, so obviously the people watching the kids downstairs are probably ready to be done doing that for you any moment. Any final burning questions? So for sake of the church's fellowship, how satisfied currently are the elders with the trellis that we have in place, the programs that we have in place, are we considering different trellis?
Maybe I'm speaking out of turn here, but I don't think any of us are married to that structure as though it were some magic formula. What Jim said, I think still rings true. I totally give an amen to it. That is, if we had no additional trellis beyond what we have on Sundays, because it was not necessary because people were sharpening one another, investing in one another, loving each other, and serving their neighbors awesome. If there was a lot of one-on-one discipleship going on, and we had none of the trellis during the week going on, I think we would be excited about the vine growth. So I don't think that any of us ever talked about it as though it is necessarily some sort of magic formula for gospel-y growth.
And so I'll speak quickly, but a big reason for the, I know I said don't lie as one of the points in my sermon, but I was speaking tongue in cheek. Well, a big part of the purpose of the Life to Life groups is not fellowship. There's fellowship that takes place, but a big part of the purpose of Life to Life groups is extending the shepherding burden to find out where people are and helping them become more like Christ, which includes fellowship, But it's not just for being together. There is actually, that's a part of the agenda and purpose behind those, but a big part is equipping, ideally, the leaders of those groups to take on greater shepherding care beyond just the elders, but the life-to-life leaders, increasing in their own weight of what that feels like to care for a smaller group of people and be encouraging them.
So it enables us to focus on a few to reach another set of few to then have that continue to extend out. So if the only purpose of Life to Life Groups was fellowship, then probably we could just do, you know, more potlucky things or get rid of that trellis and see what happened. But as it comes to our purpose to extend the shepherding burden, those life-to-life groups are a key way of that happening still currently, which sometimes goes better than other times. But that's the platonic form, as I just described it, of why we have life-to-life groups. Okay, Dave, how about if you pray for us and then we'll be done and on your way out, not only take your kids with you, but also if you see those who have been working, thank them for that work.
So Dave, you want to pray? Father, we thank you for this time together and the fellowship that we have with you and it is through your son. each one of us grasp a principle and to apply it. And whether it be something we need to change or something that we're doing, that we need to strengthen, help each one of us find something to make us better at what we are to do for you. So we thank you for that. We thank you for the blessing it is to have a congregation like this that gets together and serves the food and organizes and makes the brochures and all the stuff that's involved and makes it really a pleasure to be part of this congregation and not have all the drama that can happen over all this stuff and how smoothly it seems to go with our congregation.
It's a great blessing and a real testimony, I think, to the Christian lives that a lot of us are living out in this. And so help us to do that. And we thank you for all of those things. And we thank you, of course, most of all, for your son, in whose name we pray, Jesus Christ, amen.
