It’s the young, hip, postmodern millennials, versus the old boring conservatives. Who’s going to win? I’m Joel Fieri, and it’s What You’ve Been Searching For. Stay tuned.

We’ve done some new research here at Christian Podcast Central on what you, the Christian podcast listener, have been searching for online and we’ve had some new subjects and new questions come up. And one of the subjects and questions is concerning a documentary done a couple of years ago called American Gospel: Christ Crucified. And in this documentary, it basically explores the phenomenon, about 20 years old now of the emergent church. Some of the leaders from long ago that started this movement in reaction to some of the excesses they felt of modern American evangelicalism.

It consisted of people like Bart Campolo, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, if you’re familiar with those names. Some names I wasn’t familiar with, Richard Rohr, who’s very big in the movement that I didn’t know about. So I know about them now. In this documentary, they explore the differences in worldview and Christian view of these emergent church leaders, very postmodern, some even on the mystical new age side of things. And they contrasted it with more conservative, Orthodox evangelical pastors and theologians like John MacArthur, Alister Begg, Phil Johnson, Paul Washer, Voddie Baucham, people like that. Along with many others that I had never heard of, and I didn’t know frankly who they were.

But it was very interesting give and take. It was done in a very conversational style. It started off as fairly balanced between the arguments of the postmodern and millennial emergent pastors who are abandoning traditional Christian faith. And they’re explaining why. The most prominent one was Bart Campolo another one was Tony Jones, but there were many others, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, as I said, and even Oprah Winfrey, if you can believe that. So these people gave their arguments as to why they either couldn’t accept a certain attribute of God as explained in the Bible, or why they had stepped away from what we would call Orthodox Christian faith.

And then there was an answer to that from the conservative evangelical side of things, the theologians and pastors would have an answer to that, or a rebuttal to that, or explain why this attribute of God is in the Bible. Anything from, “Can God be a loving God and a wrathful God? Did God actually kill his son? Did man kill his son? Is God a cosmic child abuser? Did Jesus go to the cross willingly?” All these arguments So it was very interesting. It was back and forth and very relevant. This is in my view, probably the main division and the main question and Christian circles today. What do we believe about the nature of God? Can we accept the attributes of God as the Bible lays them down? Quite frankly, these progressive millennial pastors can’t. Some of them are a little more honest about it than others.

Bart Campolo, who’s the son of Tony Campolo, if you’re familiar with Tony, a famous Christian pastor, has been since I started reading his books 40 years ago. And Bart is very honest. He has lost his faith. He is now a secular humanist. He’s a Universalist. And he’s very, very honest about it. He says, “I became a Christian, and 15 minutes later, I started doubting my faith until eventually I had to abandon my faith altogether. I don’t believe it anymore.” But yet he’s still trying to do good as his understanding of good is, which comes from the Bible. So he’s a little inconsistent with that, but he’s very honest. Some of the other ones, Tony Jones and Richard Rohr, they try at least to go back to church history, or some ancient what we would call a heresy to say, “No, this is really how we should think about God.



We talked about the plan, and then we talked about the cost. Now I want to talk about the realities of discipleship in today’s world. It’s What You’ve Been Searching For, I’m Joel Fieri. Stay tuned.

In thinking about how to land the plane on this series of discipleship if you were with us last week, you know that we talked about the cost of discipleship, and I went back to Mere Christianity and C.S. Lewis, which is where I’m going today again. Still got the copy of the old copy. I wanted to talk about how what he says, how he concludes his thoughts on what it means to follow Christ in a basic sense, in a Mere Christianity sense, with what Jesus told His disciples when He sent them out into the world, what should be our attitude towards the world, especially in today’s world, which is lining up some pretty scary and intentional things against Christianity.

So as for Mere Christianity, for Lewis, at the end of the book in the last chapter, he wraps up, like we were talking last week, compares the growth in discipleship, the growth of a Christian to be more like Christ to evolution. It’s different from the world and the scientific expectation or understanding of evolution. Our evolution has a goal. It has a target that we can see. It’s not a random happening. Not only that, He’s the one causing the evolution, so it’s different from the world’s understanding. This is what he said, and this is what had jumped out at me when I was reading this and finishing the book.

“Compared with the development of man on this planet, the diffusion of Christianity over the human race seems to go like a flash of lightning for 2000 years is almost nothing in the history of the universe. Never forget that we are still the early Christians. The present, wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy. We are still teething. The outer world, no doubt, thinks just the opposite. It thinks we are dying of old age. But it has thought that before. Again and again, it has thought Christianity was dying, dying by persecutions from without or corruptions from within, by the rise of Islam, the rise of the physical sciences, the rise of the great anti-Christian revolutionary movements.”

“But every time the world has been disappointed. The first disappointment was the crucifixion. The man came to life again. In a sense, and I quite realize how frightfully unfair it must seem to them, that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing He started. And each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place. No wonder they hate us.”

Okay. So that’s Lewis’ conclusion on how what we expect or what Jesus expects of us, how we grow, how we evolve is different from what the world understands. And the key is here. It’s different from what the world understands or even accepts.

While I was reading this, as I told you before, there was kind of a coincidence of happenings when I was reading my devotions a couple of weeks ago that put this into focus for me. I was reading through Matthew, and I came to Matthew 10, where Jesus has concluded the sermon on the Mount, talking about the kingdom of heaven and all the different ways that we should treat each other and seek God and what the kingdom of heaven is like. He then sends His disciples out to be His representatives. The first time He sends them out, he gives them power to heal the sick, cast out demons, all these things.

But He tells them something when He sends them out that I think is key. It jumped out at me, and I want to share it with you. I’m reading from Matthew 10, starting in Verse 16. He says, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves, therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

Salvation is free, but is discipleship? We’re going to talk about counting the cost, today on What You’ve Been Searching For. I’m Joel Fieri, stay tuned.

In continuing our discussions on discipleship, which is one of the main topics you’ve been searching for as Christian podcast listeners, today, I want to wrap it up by sharing some convergence of experiences I’ve had in the last week or so. As I mentioned, when I started doing this podcast a few months back, I picked up Mere Christianity, the very same copy I read in college for the very first time. I still have it. It’s a little taped up now.

But I shared with you a story from the forward, where C.S. Lewis was talking about his goal for the book, which was to introduce people to mere Christianity or basic Christianity. He wasn’t going to get into which church to go to or any great theological discussions. He just wanted, in his words, to walk them into a hallway, get them to become Christians, walk them into a building where there was a lot of different doors and they can choose whichever expression of Christianity they wanted. That was his goal.

At the end of the book, which I just finished because I’ve been … When you read C.S. Lewis, you can’t read it quickly. You have to read a little bit, read a few chapters at a time, let it marinate, chew on it a little bit, think about it. His level of thinking is so far above mine anyways. That’s what I found myself doing. So I finished the book this week and he finishes it with a description of what it really means to follow Christ. He goes from that basic introduction at the beginning, and at the end, he talks about just exactly what Jesus wants to do to you and with you and for you when you become his follower or his disciple. So, what I want to go over today is a couple of the concepts he gives. And then next week, I want to wrap it up in a nice tight bow, hopefully.

And at the end of the book, near the final couple chapters, he talks about counting the cost. And what I want to do is I want to read the passage in Luke 14, where Jesus talks about counting the cost of being his disciple. So I’m going to read from Luke, starting in verse 25 of chapter 14. Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them, he said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? If you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘he started to build and couldn’t finish.’ Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with 10,000 men to oppose one coming against him with 20,000? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”

Right here, Jesus is laying down something pretty radical and he’s asking an awful lot of us. And it is a cost. He’s using an example that the disciples or anybody listening would know about. They would know about building a tower or building a building, and obviously, they’d know about war. They lived in a war time culture, pretty much, most of the time. So he’s using language that they would understand, but also something that’s would challenge them against or as opposed to what the Pharisees and what the leaders and what their traditions were telling them.

Jesus gave us the great commission, but is it really that big a deal? It is, it’s worldwide. I’m Joel Fieri, this is What You’ve Been Searching For, stay tuned. Now in our last episode on discipleship and the great commission, the masters plan, Jesus’s plan for discipleship as He spelled out in the great commission, and we talked about in previous podcasts the different aspects that we see in the great commission. First, we talked about how the key to Christian living is obeying all of Jesus’s commands. And the second, last week’s podcast we talked about it was how baptism, identifying with Christ burial and resurrection, and His cleansing power, how that fits into the concept of discipleship.

Today, I want to talk about the worldwide implications of discipleship, because the very first thing Jesus said in the great commission was, “Go make disciples of all nations.” What does that mean, all nations? Well, it means what it says, all nations. It means the world. World missions is not a very popular subject in some Christian circles these days. A lot of Christians are not really concerned with the world, they’re more concerned with their local communities. And Jesus did tell His disciples before He ascended, He said, “Go into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth and preach the gospel.”

Today is fashionable to worry about Jerusalem and even Judea and Samaria, worrying about our local communities. A lot of people say, why are we so concerned about preaching the gospel to some foreign country when we can’t even take care of our people in our own communities? And that’s legitimate. Jesus did say, worry about your own community. As a matter of fact, that was the focus in the book of Acts, the church in Acts. After Jesus ascended and the disciples were in Jerusalem, they started building a church and they started focusing on Jerusalem, and they were successful, they grew.

But then things like feeding of widows and who was going to wait on tables and all those other minor things and those little petty squabbles started coming up. And what it really showed was that those disciples were being disobedient. Jesus didn’t say, stay in your Holy huddle. He didn’t say, stay in Jerusalem. He said, wait in Jerusalem until the power of the Holy Spirit comes, what we talked about last week and then go. Well, the disciples didn’t go, they were worried about Jerusalem. So what did God do? God sent a persecution and He drove the disciples out of Jerusalem.

And one of the first things that God took care of was the ends of the earth. Phillip was on the road and he encountered the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the scriptures and didn’t understand them. He was on his way back to Ethiopia and he had gotten a copy of the scriptures and was reading them and didn’t understand them. So God brought Philip into his path and Phillip explained it to him, explained the passage, explained the gospel to him, and the Ethiopian eunuch went on his way to Ethiopia, and that seed that was planted with that Ethiopian eunuch is evident today. Ethiopia has one of the thriving Christian communities in Africa and any parts of the world and has historically.

So we can see the fruit of that first encounter, that first effort, that first person God used to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. So when we say, no, we need to disconcern ourselves with local concerns or our communities and not worry so much about the ends of the earth, that’s not God’s plan. He never said, first take care of Jerusalem and Judea and then go to the ends of the earth. No, it’s a full-on effort, all three parts of it should be our focus.

So how does the ends of the earth relate to discipleship? Well, this is what we need to be right off the bat instilling in our disciples, the disciples we make,

We’re talking discipleship and the master’s plan. What part does baptism have in it? Well, you might think I have a lot of well-developed ideas on that, but you’d be wrong. I’m just learning myself. This is What You’ve Been Searching For. I’m Joel Fieri. Stay tuned. Let’s talk about it.

As we mentioned, we’re talking discipleship, and for that, we’re looking at the master’s plan, Jesus’s plan as He articulated in the great commission. Now, last week, we talked about one aspect of that great commission, which was teaching our disciples to obey everything Jesus commanded. Obedience is the key to living the Christian life. It’s the key to loving Jesus and it’s even the key to loving each other. And if you didn’t catch that conversation, we’ll put the link below. This week, I wanted to take the second aspect we pointed out last week, and that is baptism. What role does baptism play in discipleship? Jesus mentions it. He says, “Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And then he goes on to tell us to teach them to obey everything he commanded.

But I’ve got to tell you, with all my experience in my younger days in discipleship, all the training I received, I was encouraged to be baptized. I was baptized in obedience, but I never learned, and it was never emphasized what role baptism itself has to play in discipleship. But it’s right there in the great commission. Jesus said it. He made it very prominent, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. So, I, in preparing this podcast, I had to do some research and to look up what some people thought, and it’s very interesting. In baptism, no matter what you think of it, sprinkling or immersion, however you practice it or whatever you believe, it’s an identification with Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. Going under the water or being under the water, His death, coming out, His resurrection, and that we are cleansed by Jesus’s death, and we have new life as part of His resurrection. And that is a public statement.

So, for discipleship, when we disciple people and baptize them, we’re telling them this is your first public proclamation of your faith. This is your outward expression of what it is inwardly that you are committing to, that you are becoming a disciple of this Jesus you are following. This is what His mission on earth was, and this is why I’m following Him. This is why I’m His disciple. So, that sets the disciple on a course of following Jesus. But with that also comes the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And that’s another conversation we can have whether you’re baptized at conversion or whether it’s a second blessing, but I’m not going to get into that now. But either way, the baptism of the Spirit, the Bible makes it very clear to us that that is what gives us the power to follow Jesus, the power to walk with Him and obey His commands.

But it’s interesting, with that, you would think that is all we need. We’ve identified. We put our faith and we’ve made our outward expression of what our faith is. The death, burial, resurrection, and cleansing power of Jesus’s death and His blood, and then we have the power to walk with Him, that should be enough for us. But it’s not. As we talked about last week, Jesus designed discipleship to be done with other Christians. Last week, we talked about what Paul said to Timothy. 2 Timothy 2:2, “Timothy, the things you’ve seen in me, entrust a faithful man, and they’ll be able to teach others also.” So, there’s this always this idea that discipleship and Christianity is not made to be solely between us and God, us and Jesus.

Last week we talked about discipleship, and we mentioned a book about the Master’s Plan for discipleship and evangelism. This week, I want to look at the actual master’s plan, the great commission. I’m Joel Fieri, and this is What You’ve Been Searching For. Stay tuned.

If you were with us last week, I described how I had a trip down memory lane through Facebook. Some pictures of me in college was posted by a Facebook group of Campus Crusade for Christ of San Diego State University, where I went to school at the time. It was fun seeing pictures of me with hair and how we all look back then and, like I said, it was a fun trip down memory lane.

But if you caught the podcast, I described that those people in those pictures and in that group and in my church at the time were the people that discipled me, the people that took me under their wings and taught me how to be a mature Christian. And it set the course for my life in following God, following Christ.

I also mentioned that in those discipleship times, the discipleship experience was guided by a book called The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman. In that book, he talks about how Jesus did discipleship with His disciples and His apostles. This week, I want to delve into that a little bit more, but I don’t want to use a book this week. I want to use Jesus’s actual words, and that’s the great commission. I want to read it for you now.

In Matthew 28:16-20, it says this, “Then the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me, therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I’m with you always to the very end of the age.'”

Now there’s a whole lot to unpack there in that verse, but what I want to do is just go over some things that stand out to me, and there’s three things that I see that are important in this verse. First of all, Jesus is telling the disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. That’s the first thing, all nations. The second thing is to baptize them in the name of the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The third point that’s important, and what I’m going to talk about today, is to teach them to obey all that I have commanded you.

Obedience these days is not a popular word, even in Christian circles, certainly not in our secular society. But in Christian circles, we don’t really like the word obey. We don’t want to think of our relationship with God as one out of obedience to a task master, or something that’s oppressive in a way that obedience kind of tends to convey. We’d rather focus on words like having a personal relationship with God or loving Jesus.

But it’s interesting. Jesus talks about obedience here in the great commission, but this is not the only place He talks about obedience. All through His ministry with His disciples, Jesus stresses that the best way to love Him, the best way to have a good relationship with Him is to obey His commands. Jesus said all over, especially in John 15, nine times, Jesus talks about, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.” That’s how we express our love for God and our love for Jesus, by doing what He told us to do.

A church I attend has a excellent motto on this. They say, “Faith is trusting God enough to do what He tells you to do,” and that’s what Jesus is saying here in the great commission. As I said, it’s not a popular word these days, it’s not a popular concept, but I think it’s the key to discipleship.

Jesus had a plan. It was a master plan and it was the master’s plan and we’d be good to follow it. I’m Joel Fieri, President of Christian Podcast Central. This is what you’ve been searching for and we’re talking discipleship. Stay tuned.

Recently I had what I call a Facebook experience, it’s one of those nostalgic things that comes up on social media once in a while, and it happened to me last week. Some pictures from my college days through a ministry called Campus Crusade for Christ at San Diego State University where I was a student a few years ago, maybe even a few decades ago. It’s always fun. All these pictures of me in college when I was a young man with hair, it’s always fun to see what we all looked like back then and reconnect with people that I hadn’t seen or talked to in a long time. As I said, it was nostalgic, I kind of went down memory lane for a while.

What was significant about this as I showed it to my wife, my wife and I have often had conversations where she will ask me, “Why are you the way you are? How did you develop these certain characteristics that formed your life?” Often I will point her back to this time in my life, to my college days. I was a young, 18-year-old pup, very immature, did not know a thing about life and how to live a Christian life at all.

I came to the Speak University and, fortunately, by God’s grace, I found this group of people through Campus Crusade for Christ and through my church at the time. Through this group there were older people, older college guys, and program leaders, and pastors through my church that took me under their wing, like I said, as a young pup, were patient with me, and poured their life into me, and taught me how to live a Christian life.

Taught me how to study the Bible, how to do my finances, how to treat a Christian girl, how to do all these things that I had no idea how to do, and it was through what they called at the time discipleship. In evangelical circles at the time discipleship was a big thing. What we did is we basically followed a philosophy laid out in a book by Robert Coleman called The Master Plan of Evangelism and, as I said in the intro, it was Jesus’ master plan of how to build his kingdom and how to bring people into his kingdom.

Jesus did teach the multitudes but he had a separate group of people that were his disciples, and within that group he chose 12 men to be his apostles. He chose to live with them, to do life with them, to pour himself into them, to teach them, to be with them. From those 12, he picked Peter, James, and John, the three to give special attention to and be especially close to and pour himself into. Then he sent them out to do the same, to spread his kingdom, to find other men to pour their lives into, and that was his master plan.

The key verse that we often quoted, and that was the basis of this philosophy was Second Timothy 2:2. In that verse, Paul is talking to Timothy and he says, “The things that you have heard and seen in me, these interest the faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” There’s this idea of passing along your faith, finding men that you can pour your faith into and teach and fellowship with, and be an example to, and they will turn around, find other men to do this to who will then in turn find other men. The idea is a reproductive faith idea of discipleship.

It was very effective, it had a big effect on my life. It set the foundation for my Christian walk for the rest of my life, honestly. That is a big reason why I started Christian Podcast Central. It was interesting, at the time we had some resistance to what we were doing by some other people in the Christian community and slowly but surely this plan, or this idea,

The name of the show is What You’ve Been Searching For, where we take the topics and questions from the internet that our research tells us that you, the Christian podcast listener, have been searching for. Today’s topic is something I’m going to tell you maybe you shouldn’t be searching for, or at least give you another way of thinking about it. Intrigued? Interested? Stay tuned.

The question we have today is one that you’ve probably heard a lot of and maybe thought about yourself. What’s better for me, a mega church, a small church, a house church, maybe digital church? We talked about digital churches in our last episode, and as for the other options, I was thinking about this earlier this week and how I was going to talk about this, and I realized that that question, or this topic, is seen through the framework that church has always been seen in this country.

In our history, church has always been more or less the same thing. It presented us with the same choices, just different generations had different expressions of those choices. Earlier on it was which denomination, Presbyterian, baptist Catholic? Then became emergent church versus traditional church. These days there’s all kinds of choices, but they’ve all been in the framework of freedom of choice in America and an assumption that most churches are generally the same, or at least have certain basic principles we can count on.

Well today I think all of those presuppositions, and that framework, is being thrown out the window. So in thinking about this, I was a little bit stumped on what to talk about and how to go into this topic. And in a totally unrelated thought, my wife asked me what book am I reading right now? And I didn’t have a book. And I thought, maybe I should reread a book I’ve read in the past that had an impact on me. And the first book that came to mind was Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It’s one of the first books I read as a young Christian, this is the actual copy I read as a young Christian.

I haven’t even gotten into the book yet, because last night I was reading the preface, and something hit me in the preface that I think applies to what I was thinking about the issue of, what is the right church for you, the individual Christian, or me. So little side note, my wife and I are going through this now, we’re trying to find a new church, and so we’re dealing with these same questions.

So instead of giving you my thoughts on the old framework on what’s the best style of church for us, should we go to a big church, a small church, should we stay at home watch church online? Should we start a church in our house? I mean, all those are good questions, and they’re relevant questions. But C.S. Lewis said something in this preface that I think is a new framework that we might think about looking at when we think about what kind of church we want to go to. And I want to read you a passage, the passage that struck me the most, and that I think is the most relevant.

In the preface to his book, C.S. Lewis was talking about Mere Christianity.

He didn’t want to go into a deep theological study of the differences in Christianity, he just wanted to present basic Christianity, or a fundamental Christianity, so he called it Mere Christianity. And what he was explaining in the preface is, his goal for the book was not to tell his readers which church to go to. He just wanted to introduce them to Christianity, and he used the analogy of a house. And the analogy was, “I’m just bringing you into the house and walking you into the hallway.” He goes, “You’re inside the house, you are a Christian, and there are many doors with which you can enter and be in the house.”

What is church? Is it an online, screen-based, streaming experience? Or is it a face-to-face meeting with people and germs that we might not want to associate with? That’s the topic we’re going to talk about today on What You’ve Been Searching For. I’m Joel Fieri, president of Christian Podcast Central. Stay tuned.

In our further research onto what you, the Christian podcast listener, have been searching for, one of the topics that came near the top was online church. Online church is a big deal these days. In this pandemic, shutdown world we live in, churches that didn’t have an online presence have created an online presence, and churches that were online have greatly expanded their online presence. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, as you might have guessed, I have some thoughts on that. Keep in mind, these are thoughts coming from the president of a Christian podcast network. I’ve made it my business to make sure that there’s as much good Christian content online for people to view as possible.

I also associate a lot with video and web professionals. We talk a lot about this here at Christian Podcast Central. Most of the video and web professionals I know think it’s a great idea for churches to expand their online presence. That’s a little bit like a hammer thinking everything’s a nail. If you’re a video and audio and web professional, as the one behind the camera is smiling and nodding right now, you want to take every opportunity to expand Christian content on the web and church on the web. I understand that.

Let’s talk about whether or not it’s a good thing or a bad thing to have church become more and more of an online experience. I see a couple pros, a couple good arguments for it. I see some bad arguments for it, too.

The first good argument is that it gives us access to a lot of great teaching from really great pastors that we wouldn’t otherwise have access to. I myself have watched a lot of sermons from pastors that I wouldn’t otherwise hear. Also, a lot of good worship sets, good music, good ideas, good Christian content. Again, I said that’s what I’m all for, good Christian content online.

The second good argument I see is that online is where all the souls are. All the souls that need saving are online because everybody’s online. If you look around, everybody’s on their phone. And if they’re not on their phone, they’re at Starbucks on their laptop with their phone. And if they’re not at Starbucks on their laptop with their phone, they’re at home watching their smart TV with their laptop and their phone. We are a screen-based society now. We’re a screen-addicted society. If everybody’s on their phone, on their screens online, that’s where the church should be, because that’s where the souls that need saving are. That’s really one of the reasons I started this podcast network myself, is that I wanted to redeem cyberspace. Since we’re all there, we might as well have God’s truth there. Those are the good arguments I see for expanding online church.

Now, for the arguments against expanding online church, these are the concerns I have, the dangers I see in making church a largely online experience. The first concern I have is that it will further reinforce the entertainment and performance-based culture we have in church right now. We have turned our worship experience into largely an entertainment and artistic experience. Worship has been redefined from a complete life experience of making your body a living sacrifice and holy and living your life in worship to God to strictly a music and artistic-based expression. Our worship services now are basically rock concerts followed by a presentation. It’s hard to call what sermons are these days actual sermons.

Do we open our churches or do we close our churches? Do we obey God, not man, or do we obey the governing authorities? Well, the Bible tells us to do both. What’s the best answer and what’s the best witness in these tough times? I’m Joel Fieri and this is What You’ve Been Searching For. Stay tuned, let’s talk about it.

In response to last week’s podcast, where I told my COVID-19 story about how I contracted the virus on a trip, I was sick for a couple of weeks but not really that sick and now I’m fine. I came through it just fine, and I questioned our need to live in fear of this virus. In the feedback I got from last week’s podcast, a few people stressed to me the severity of the effects of the virus, how many people have died, how many people have lost loved ones, how many people have been very sick and how overwhelmed our medical facilities and medical people are during this pandemic. I see that, and I believe that, but for every argument that can be made for the effects of the virus on people’s lives and the overwhelming nature of it, an equally strong argument can be made by the overwhelming effects of the lockdown on people, the lives lost, the lives affected, and the psychological, mental, spiritual and physical toll that this lockdown is taking.

This massive government overreach has affected the lives of many people that feel like they haven’t been heard. They feel like their stories aren’t told. They feel like their efforts to keep their lives together are somehow less significant than anybody else’s, and maybe even seen in a negative light, as seen somehow perpetuating the bad effects of the virus. They feel alone and they don’t feel acknowledged. That got me to thinking, and my thinking was triggered mostly by something that happened last week. Here, locally around our studio where we’re taping, there’s a lot of restaurants that are struggling to stay open. They are open now in peaceful protest of the county’s orders to stay closed or at least to be takeout only, but they’ve done the math, they can’t survive if they do that. So they’re opening their doors to have people sit and eat.

I’ve been doing my best to support them in this. Last week, I went to a local restaurant here. I was served by a young lady who was a little bit harried. She was overworked, staff was short, they were fairly busy. She gave me my food. After I ate my food, she came to give me my bill. She said, “Thank you for coming,” and I said, “No, thank you for being open. I’m going to do all I can to support you and all the other restaurants in that area that were trying to stay open.” Well, this previously unexpressive, stressed out young woman stepped back, brightened up with a big smile and said, “Well, thank you, hon. You can come back anytime,” I said, “I sure will.”

Other than that thinking it was great that a young woman called no guy like me hon, it really told me and opened my eyes to a possible witness field and harvest field that Christians haven’t been considering. When the Bible talks about Christian witness, there’s a couple of analogies that I think of, a couple of parables or analogies that it uses. One is good soil versus rocky soil or hard soil. Good soil that’s receptive to the gospel, rocky soil that rejects the gospel. The other is the harvest field. Jesus said, “Look at the fields. They’re ripe for harvest. Go into the world and sow the gospel.” That got me thinking, what is the good soil around us? What is the right harvest for us?

I’m not really sure how the people who disapprove of churches being open and disapprove of Christians standing up for their religious liberties, or even obeying God and not man, the people who will come against us on that,