A Liturgy for Family (#647) — https://www.thegodjourney.com/2018/08/31/a-liturgy-for-family-647/

Outside the box of religious obligation lies a road less traveled into the heart of the father's affection. Slinging freedom all over the place, this is the God Jam, the God Jam, the God Jam. Hey, I failed to mention a fun little thing that, uh, I'm also working on, uh, from last time. Oh, okay. Did you know that the game of basketball was invented to help teach people about God? That basketball is on my interest meter about as high as the basketball we've been doing. Oh, terrible. Yeah, well, sorry. I can't follow every sport. I do a little golf, a little football, and the rest of it just goes by. I've got a buddy that has done, gosh, 25 years of research into the life of Jim Naismith, and just… Some people have way too much time on their hands. No, I mean, this guy's, this, yeah, he probably does, but the reality is it is utterly fascinating. He's unfolded this guy's life as a total expert, and just all, he's an investigative journalist kind of guy, and it is such an endearing story. I've got some friends that, uh, run Caleb, and they're interested in kind of branching out beyond radio into TV, and they're really fascinated going, oh, we'd love to get behind this story. There's a chance to turn this into another wonderful movie, and it's just, it's fascinating. It's going like, wow, God's, you know, the whole bit of the guy who invented football was best friends with the guy who invented basketball, and they were just trying to do something that would help young guys not have so much trouble just, you know, being in the cities and learn to have some fun as they pursued God together, and what was crazy… Basketball was the activity. It wasn't the, because you're not really seeing the NBA drawn, lots of people at Jesus these days. No, but no, but the way he was, he was tasked to invent rules for a game that they could do on the inside, and so many of the rules that he… On the inside of what? In gymnasium. Oh, indoor. It's like that. So as they were doing football outdoors, and now it's like, we need to do something indoors because it's winter, and they needed to come up with a game that would be just as, you know, enthralling as football was, and he had two weeks to come up with it. Well, they missed. No, stop it. Stop it. This is… You're not helping. This is… I'm sorry. This is so cool. You know, I'm a slug. And with it, I just had to go like, he took a lot of the painful things of life and the little games that he played and the lessons he learned, and he sewed those into the very rules, but the first 13 rules of basketball. And I just sat there going like, no flippin' way. Nobody knows that. That's fascinating. I find myself… Yeah, I know. Gosh. I'm Wayne Jacobson. I'm Brad Cummings, and I'm more excited about that than Wayne is. He's more fascinated than I am. Make some email. We haven't done email in, gosh, a fortnight. Months. That'll only be two weeks. We haven't done it in a fortnight of months. How about that? This from Ed by email. I've been reading Beyond Sundays and appreciate all that you do to put into words what I cannot describe adequately myself. One of my friends sent me an email yesterday that struck me as ironic having just finished Beyond Sundays. In it, he said, quote, I will take this opportunity as your brother in Christ to encourage you to not forsake the gathering of the saints. Can't help it? Led by the Spirit to say it. We love you and miss you, end quote. Nice. Said, I'm not going to respond or try to explain myself to my friend, but led by the Spirit really that hurt. I thought you might find it amusing or tragic would be more accurate. Yeah. I'm led by the Spirit to put my religious obligations on you. No, but I bet that's sincere. I bet he really thinks so. Oh, I'm sure he does. I have no doubt that he's sincere. You know, is it that? I mean. But when you're sincerely pushing stuff that isn't true. No, no, no. I get that, but I do think it's kind of challenging when we have our constructs of what we have been sort of taught to perceive as true. Don't forsake the assembly of yourselves. I mean, it's like, I know the verse. Yeah. And mostly taught to put on others. I know. No, I don't want to skip that. I had lunch with a guy this week. Matt wanted to get with me and this guy is like a bull in a China shop. Man, this guy has more religious agenda going on for me, for him. And he's just putting it out there, quoting scripture and all that stuff. And he just, you know, I do this. I do that. I do this going to explode this town with the love of Jesus. And he says, he's not holding it back. But I said, you know, I don't know many people like you. He says, what? I said, man, the people I know who were seasoned a bit in Jesus don't near have this much agenda for me. Content to let Jesus flow in a way. It really, it really slowed him down. He was, what are you talking about? And he said, see, this is what I need. I need this kind of mentoring. He's going to mentor him. And I'm just going, dude, I just, I'm not where you are. I live in that space of what God's taught me. I've got to put on you and I've got to make you feel awkward. Because at one point he said, everyone I meet with, I lead to Jesus. And I said, you know, I really believe that. And he said, you do? I said, yeah, because I think they go through the motions with you because you're so overbearing. They want to get away. That's how many friends you have. I don't have any friends. And I said, I think there may be a connection there. Anyway, so that's the thing that I got out of that letter was. I get that. I think that the sympathetic one in me is I think there's a ton of well-meaning people that they're grasped of what they've been taught and the fervency with which they feel they've got to make sure people adhere to that. They do almost always justify in the Holy Spirit language of that's why I'm doing this. Man, if you have a scripture and you have the leading of the spirit, you have all you need to go dump on people. And I get how well-intentioned it is. I give you that completely. The reason I bring it up is that's pretty hard to get free from. Yes. Because if what I have is sort of a proof-texting instinct, it's really because I don't want you to, you can't be doing something different. These are the rules. You have to follow them. And this little quiver inside me that's bugging me, that's got to be the Holy Spirit. Yes. Well, people don't see you wagging that finger at me, but that's exactly right. That's exactly how I look. It's because some was quivering inside and I know I need to move. I need to do something. And I need to put it on you so I'll feel better. And the Holy Spirit has served in me because I've made my peace, said my peace. How do we help sort of disengage that sort of religious instinct that uses proof-texts and backs it up with the, in quotes, leading of the spirit? Well, that gets to my second email. Oh. How did I know that? He says, this is from Robin Bevin, Canada. Hello, Wayne. My husband and I have been listening to you and reading your books for about seven years. We've been so grateful for your teaching and encouragement and doing life with Jesus outside of the institutional church. Our ongoing struggle with fellow believers continues to be how does one explain life outside the building when the apostle Paul, for example, addresses church behavior and protocol constantly, which he doesn't do, but that's the rhetoric. How does one explain being outside of the church when the inside the building Christians are coming back at you with all this scripture and the classic comment, it's in the Bible. We are called to do it this way. We are wondering if you and Brad be willing to speak specifically on ways to explain, communicate why it's okay not to do church the way Paul and others seemingly have it laid out in the scriptures. Where did we get the habit of weekly meetings in the scriptures? Because they met on the first day of the week in Corinth. Okay. That's enough proof text. That was on the front of our bulletin when I was young. I know, but where did that notion come from? Do you know? I mean, when did they start meeting from Genesis to Revelation? When did we start having weekly gatherings that people kind of should attend? The synagogue from exile in Bethlehem. Isn't that a bizarre place for it to start as a practice? Is there any... They were living in a hostile land. They needed a plausibility structure. No, but they came up with it. They were actually, their bell had been rung and the unthinkable happened. They got booted out of the land. God allowed their very enemies to come and remove them. Yes. And the supposed temple that's so important was utterly destroyed. Yes. And so in that foreign land of exile, the priests started to gather so as to figure out like, what the heck? What did we do? How do we make an income? No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. That happens later. Yeah, okay. That's more of a New Testament reality. That's okay. I'm sorry. I lost my word. It's in exile that we get that as a habit where they started meeting in synagogues and that nowhere did we have record of God saying, here's my command. It was something they did and they gathered to understand and what's so amazing is first and second kings and first and second chronicles. The name. No, I know. But don't they feel like Xerox copies to some degree? Well, there's a little difference, but yeah. There is. Yeah. But it's kind of the same history. It covers some similar land. First and second kings was written by the sort of the palace folks. It was the representatives of the day and the temple. And it's like, okay, so they're writing down the history as it happened. First and second chronicles was written by the priests in exile looking back, trying to draw all the lessons of how do we get this wrong? So as your suggestion to Robin Bev here is that you go into this litany of things with the person who's trying to convince you to get back to church. Where did this begin? No, but we have, we've been taught that this is what God expects and nowhere do we have the command where our habit of doing it was ever a directive from God. Well, that's how most people read Hebrews 10. They do. It is the directive, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together. And even, he's kind of making light of it in this thing, but people assume that what we have as church today, what our meetings are and our pastors and all that's exactly what was going on in the early church. We're just doing what Paul told us to do. When you look at the entire history of how God is working with his people, if that was so instrumental, how come it takes 3,000 years before it becomes something that we're kind of doing? It wasn't a part of any of the way they lived life with God. God was not the God of the meeting. He was God of the 24-7 living life. Not so much in the Old Testament, I don't think. He was the God in temple over there, and they came four or five times a year for feasts and things. They had less than weekly meetings. But God didn't even want the temple. I get that. I'm just saying, until the cross comes, man, people are not wanting God in their tent every day with them. Put him over there, which we know he wasn't really there. He was everywhere. But they didn't know that, right? But I think we have a record of him saying, I don't want to be just here. I like being with my people. And so I look at that and I go like, I think that's valuable to sort of recognize that they only came together for services three, four, maybe five times a year. And they weren't services. They were parties and gatherings. And you look at it and you're like, okay, so how has this devolved into, well, no, that's what this is the form that we have to be doing. And I'm just going to like, it was never all that important. And if the temple-centric mindset was so important, most of the entire history of God's dealing with his people wasn't focused on the temple. It was only there for a little while and it got destroyed twice. He didn't seem to be caring about it. And I've even told him to destroy it when he was here. Maybe it's not the focus. And so when someone's coming at you as far as the in the beating, in the building meeting people, it's like, I do think that little history looks valuable to kind of like, no, wait a minute. If it really had little and nothing to do with so much of how God related to his people, why do we now consider everything? And I think the reason is because for a lot of people that is their spirituality. That's the only thing they have. We made the church the focus. Yeah, I go to my weekly meeting or two or worship practice or whatever. That's my life in Christ. I don't have a life in Christ that wakes up on Monday morning, goes to work with me. I don't have God in my life freely. I do my spirituality there and check the boxes. So people who aren't checking those boxes make other people nervous. And I might be led to, you know, from the Holy Spirit to bring up a verse that God doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. Yeah. Some people regard one day of the week more special than others. Others regard all the same. What the heck does that mean? Other than what it says, that's kind of not the focus and the point. So obviously it's not the only valid expression. And that may be helpful to the person who's out. When I respond back to this email before I didn't know if we'd get to it on a podcast. But maybe the thing is, why do you have to convince them? Why do you want them to know? I don't think people see what we're talking about until the Holy Spirit begins to open their eyes to it. So people would come well-intentioned though they'd be to drag you back into the pen with the rest of us and discount your salvation if you don't. But really, God hasn't called us to wrestle with those people over and over again. It's just... No, I don't. But I do think, at least I hear in their request the challenge to go, okay, this is what God's doing in me, but I've got some aggressive institutional folks who are really kind of declaring me wrong. And I think people are wanting some help in defending the validity of how they're pursuing God. Yeah. And to even say that Paul often speaks about the protocols of church behavior, blah, blah, blah. That's so rarely mentioned in Paul. Paul's more about how we live this life in him. But that's what we've reduced him down. We've reduced him down to the ethicist. Yep. We don't think of him as the guy who wrote 1 Corinthians 13. And principles we can follow. Instead of a Jesus, we can know. This was written called, the church was never meant to be a place. This is by a popular blogist, John Pavlovitz. And it was in Relevant Magazine back in September 2017. But someone just said it to me and I thought, well, what an interesting art. This is a pastor guy. Okay. This is how he says. And I'm... This is taking snippets of the article. I'm not reading the whole article to you. He said, Jesus teaches kingdom, not building. The kingdom he speaks about is not aware, but a win. When God is honored, worshiped and respected, the kingdom is present. Throughout the Gospels, you can find Jesus teaching on the characteristics of his kingdom. People as they reflect, and people as they reflect the character of God in the world. The church was never about brick and mortar. It was always greater than that. It was about the way of being in the world. So people are the building blocks. Jesus feeds 5,000. The crowd has been listening to Jesus teach on a remote hillside. And the nearest Chick-fil-A is 2,000 years away. The gathering there is a bit of a mix of invested and curious and skeptical and no sanctuary liturgy. Only Jesus speaking about God in real time and then sharing a meal with those gathered on the hillside. That should be the model through the New Testament. Gather, eat, share, remember me, live. Isn't that good liturgy? That's good. Gather, eat, share. It's from a pastor. So the early believers were essentially in-house churches where immediate family, extended families and friends were already living in meaningful community together. They didn't have to run out of space in the sound system and start service planning. Jesus says we're two or three or gathered. He's present two or three, not 40 or 150 or 6,000, not an auditorium with a speaker, a band, and dozens of rows of chairs. The idea of them needing to visit a specific place to have proximity to God was now ludicrous. They were the place. This is from a pastor, man. I love that Jesus tells the disciples to remember him when they break bread together in the future. He is not telling them to establish a weekly worship service or to create a rigid liturgy or to institute a sacrament. He's commanding them not to forget him, to live together and to eat and to remember. Jesus' ministry was about decentralizing religion so that the people carried it, not the synagogue or temple or sanctuary. He could have added priests. Building, meal, and that by a stream. Those are all things you might do on a Sunday morning and he says this, all equally sacred, all equally holy, all you being the biblical church. That sounds good, like freedom. Isn't that really, really wonderful? I love that a guy who's kind of vested in the thing is saying to people, don't get preoccupied with this thing. It's not the thing anyway. It's the kingdom that matters and it's living life and sharing it freely. Isn't the Sunday gathering the location, isn't that really a convenience for trying to foster community? Maybe. I don't think that's what it's trying to do. It's convenient for sure. I do think that there is an element that for a lot of people, the real reason they come to church is a longing to be connected in some form of community. I don't think anyone really loves being isolated and alone without that sense of a shared relationship. If they have that, they're not needing the convenience of someone else organizing it. Right. Unless they're told they have to have it. Right. It's like, of all the years pastoring, I used to think, oh, it's such a good teacher. They're here to hear me. It's like, no, they really weren't. Whether I was or wasn't, they really came for the desire to be with others and God. I end up going like, that's a great thing, not a bad thing. I don't think I saw that as a pastor guy. I was still more on my religious agenda and here's what we need to do and here's how you should be discipled and all that other stuff. And I got things to tell you. But I look at, for a lot of people, it's like somehow they have not integrated their life with Jesus into the everyday dynamics in such a way that it fosters it wherever they're at and whoever they're with. And because they're not really doing that, they then are somewhat dependent upon, well, who can orchestrate the convenience of that gathering where I can go be with people that think like me or worship like me or believe like me. And it really is more of a consumerist convenience thing that a lot of people have just become accustomed to. And I end up going like, Except where I grew up, it was much more of this is what a good Christian does. It wasn't people like, Oh, I really want to go find some community on Sunday morning. So I'm going to go down and hang out with these people. It was, it's your responsibility to do that. This is where you get. If the convenience was, it'd be more to get teaching because I don't even know who Jesus is. I don't understand the Bible. So I can go down here, somebody teach the Bible. Now you can get that online. You can get that 100,000 different ways. You don't have to go to a building to do that. I look back in our days, the church we grew up in that families and generations had been in. This is what you're supposed to do. Well, there was all about friendship. I mean, we enjoyed being with our friends. That's what they were. There are grandmas and grandpas and friends and cousins and people that you'd known it's a school with and they were your Christian friends and buddies. And, you know, we would go not because we really enjoyed sitting through service. Man, that was a pain in the neck, but we played hide and seek in the grounds of the church afterwards outside and I went across to fosters freeze and got a dessert or something. I mean, it was, it was the community that did it. Mostly today and mostly mega churches and mostly those things. It's more about the obligation to be here. You get saved to go to church. I think so, yeah. Because there's not a lot of community that happens and people often say, man, I've been going to this church, blah, blah, but nobody here knows my name. Nobody here is and it's maybe the, I think I've just been bumping into a different set of folks because I think for me, I see less the mantra of religious obligation. I would say 10, 15 years ago. Yeah, that was a lot bigger demand. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. But today I end up going like more and more because good teaching can be found just about anywhere in a whole lot more convenient ways than having to go to a service and then being frightened that they're going to conjure me for their cash. Right. For your cash. Yeah. And I think the bulk of what draws people to Sunday gatherings is a yearning for Christian fellowship and community. It doesn't really happen while the service is going on. Right. It really is. It happens before and after and it's only as those people meander away from the meeting and actually experience life together. Does it actually happen? But I think a lot of, a lot of these are the people we've bumped into is they're there yearning for that. They may be in that place of, well, it's not really happening for me. I get that, but I end up going like, I think that's why there is that sort of the instilled habit of this is what we're supposed to do because they're not really fostering it and the everyday effects of life. And I wish they would because I think that would, that would make Christianity a lot more recognizable as a way in which we live life as opposed to the meeting we go to. Yeah. Which I love this little liturgy he shares. Gather, eat, share, remember him, live. That makes a great little, because I think that's, that's where my life mostly lives. Where I was in Maine was the people we gathered with, we ate with, we remembered him with, we shared and we, we moved from there. And I think that, that is such a, whether it's a Friday night around a campfire, whether it's sitting in a backyard having pot luck together. What we really enjoy where that community really gets answered is not sitting in a pew in a mega church watching a TV screen of a pastor who's six miles away at the other congregation. It really is by being face to face with people who share a passion for Jesus and a hunger for him and a desire to live that reality, not just go to a meeting once a week to celebrate it or whatever. I know some people, and this is what painting with a broad brush is never real effective, whether it's hunger for community, hunger for teaching, obligation. Some there is that it's an identity thing. I'm identifying as a Christian, these are my people, so I'm with them. Since I'm part of something bigger than myself, which is nothing, it's not really about community. It's just about having an identity and often that's preyed on as well. But people like this, this is what I think of when people are saying, you're missing the assembling of yourselves together, you should be there with the rest of us, here's the scripture, and the Holy Spirit led me to tell you all that. I think one of the things that I look at now, I remember, and I shared this story recently in Maine, so I brought it back to mind, I remember teaching something on Sunday morning that was really important for, and I could probably say 10, 12 people in this congregation. And almost invariably, when I would be sharing that, and I don't mean to rag on them, I mean to really help them with some things you're struggling with, I noticed they're not there. As I'm talking, I'm going, wow, the people I thought this might really be a blessing to, aren't here. And then, the weird thing that a pastor does, I guess, or a weird thing I did, I go away saying, well no wonder they're struggling. They don't have enough commitment to be where they're supposed to be. And the idea that this is where it happens you weren't here, you missed it. Instead of, which I would do now, man I had those 12 people on my heart, they weren't here today. I'm going to make a lunch appointment with them, and them, and them, and I'm going to share with them some of the things I think that God's touched my life with that may be a blessing to them. It would be to not say you're not coming to a community, but actually, so this couple, instead of the Holy Spirit told me to tell you not to, I'd say, hey we really miss you guys. Why don't we go out to dinner sometime? Why don't we just have the fellowship, yeah, beyond the meeting, and I remember doing the same thing, thinking if you're not at the meeting you're obviously not serious, so you're not getting it here and that's the problem. And I wouldn't do that at all. Isn't that primarily the preoccupation of the professionals? Most assuredly. And perhaps the immediate lay volunteers that are getting their identity through serving and that capacity. They get their strokes of value by helping. Especially if they like guitars and like the lights and the mic. Yeah, I think worship team people, especially, that's true. And less so childcare people. Yeah, no, you have to, typically you have to conjure. A little obligation there. Yeah, yeah, a little bit of that. But I think, sadly, I think a lot of it is that really is people saying how do I find that sense of validation and my sense of value and contribution and they sort of pride themselves in the service of that because they get strokes for it. Oh, it's also, I know as a pastor, part of that I know influenced me, being very busy in all the meetings and things you got to go to, is Sunday morning is an efficient delivery system. If I've got something to teach, you can get them all here and just give them an hour of this. And to even think about 12 lunch appointments, which can't even start till three months from now because my schedule is that full. Yeah, it really, it really became about efficient delivery more than it was. And a part of that is if we got to do this thing every week, how much time is that taking? Hundreds of hours of planning and putting it together, blah, blah, blah. Rather than if we were just living it together, then the people who maybe are more struggling would get more attention instead of less attention because they're not in the meetings. You'd have more space to include them, which we do now. I mean, it's there and I have the capacity now to when we see somebody that we know is struggling and wanting to find a journey, can't find it. We have the space to invite them into our life and our home and hang out with them and help them find some traction on the journey. We just do. And I love that. I love that as much as anything I've ever done with people. But in the days of pastoring and all the people that want a piece of your life in that environment, I think you do. I teach this class there. I do this thing here. I prepare. I don't really have time for people. I've got ministry to do. It's weird. It's a weird twist. But yeah, I think it happens. Good for me. Where? I mean, going back to like the original question. Where do you really see in the life of the unfolding story? I mean, Jesus talked to crowds, but he wasn't holding regular meetings. I mean, he didn't just like, okay, we're going to set up at Jerusalem and we're going to do our Sunday thing. Yeah. So some of you need to get some guitars and get practicing. Yeah. So he quit picking up the guitars. Oh, it's hilarious. See, I actually the one thing I do miss is the corporate times of worship. If there's one thing I do miss, it's the engagement with others and the presence of God that was very profound and real. No, I agree with you. I think that's cool. Yeah. So I end up going like, I could do without all the other stuff, but I do miss that. But Jesus didn't teach them to do that either. As far as we know, never did it. I'm not shooting on anyone. I'm saying I miss that. I enjoy that. I enjoy it when we just do it in the house. I'll put on my own worship and I'll have a grand old time, just me worshiping him. But it's interesting to me going like, where if Jesus is central to kind of the model, it is bizarre that we're going like, okay, he didn't even do that. Right. So if he didn't, why have we inherited the thou must? Because Paul said some things that could be loosely construed as such. That's why. Seriously. I know, but even if we looked at Paul and what he was about on his missionary journeys, he did not just stay in a place and do services. True. So I end up going like, all the people that we're relying on that we're thinking we're extracting the precious directives from, if I'm honest with the narrative of what they did, they didn't do it. That's why I don't think we've taught people to look at the narrative. We've taught people to proof text instead. That you can find it for sake, not the assembling, and they gathered on the first day of the week and they spoke to each other in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and women had to shut up and couldn't talk and there were things called pastors and elders. That's good enough. We've got the proof text that tells us to go do it. But if you look at the narrative like you're saying, that isn't in the story. Not one thing we do today that we say is essential to the faith is in the New Testament. Well, it's not even there. You have to make it up. We talked about one evening discussion in Massachusetts. We were talking about elders and the spiritual authority. Somebody brought it up and just saying, you know, you got to obey the elders and we talked about what's the difference between the elder of a church who's got responsibilities to an institution and elders in the body of Christ that are encouraging people. Yeah, how to live. Not super intending a gathering and an institution and who gets what and who gets to speak, who gets to be on this, who gets to lead this. A club with authority. Yeah, they were not authority people in structures. They were older brothers and sisters, not chronologically necessarily. They were older in the faith. So they were able to help other people grow. Sharing life. Yeah, they were able to help other people grow. And I think when you really want to help other people grow and you don't see this while you're there, a service is the worst place to help people grow. It's incredibly passive. They're just watching it happen. Most of it's forgotten within the first five minutes of departure. Yeah, when I travel sometimes people say, we can get you in this church speak Sunday morning and I'll go, really don't bother. I go, what? I said, if you feel like that's God, I always put myself in the hands of people who invite me. You can do whatever you want and I'll be there. But I'm just going to tell you, if I do a Sunday morning service, I'm going to spend a morning getting up, preparing, going to a meeting, sitting through a lot of stuff, maybe speaking 20, 25 minutes, maybe go out to lunch with the pastor and his wife and people who invited me. I'm two o'clock in the afternoon and I've literally not been in a conversation with anybody that's been meaningful. Versus, man, get 10, 12 of us in a home on Sunday morning and we can talk from 10, 30, 10 to two in the afternoon and there'll be lots of wonderful things happen. That's just how I see it now, which is very different from the way I used to see it. I used to go home having taught 500 people and you've taught them and now you've gone home to your meal and you've really benefited them. They've heard the word of God from your lips and by Tuesday you don't realize none of them remember what you said for the most part. Or if they did, they don't remember how to, because it was an intellectual exercise, I heard things I should do and now I'm trying to do them. If it didn't encourage the relationship with God, then it's going to be forgotten shortly anyway, I think. I think when it becomes that rote thing that we do and sort of the presupposition that this is what we do every week, I think you do lose a fair amount of the genuine engagement from the Holy Spirit that here's why. I love the fact that it's like, I don't feel the obligation to go or attend because it's more like, no, that wasn't part of the narrative. I think one of the biggest hindrances we have is the bulk of everybody's spiritual instruction has been given to them by a group that is sort of teaching it in a self-validating way. You repeat that? That's pretty good stuff right there. I mean, I agree. I think that the narrative has been taught to us by sort of a priest class that has been teaching us the narrative in a self-validating way. And so people don't really have the story. They haven't really read the Bible as if it was a narrative. We have learned the proof text by the priests that want to prove things to us. And you can proof text any reality you want to out of Scripture. Just about, yeah. If you're not into the narrative, if you just, I can grab one from Colombe and make my meal, you can just about justify anything you want. And I think that's the sad dynamic that's going like, wait a minute. When you try to tell people, just tell me the unfolding story of God. How did He take people on a journey? What did that look like? What did Jesus do with the disciples for those three years? I mean, was it a bunch of weekly needing some place? And they were the ushers and they were the... I mean, it's like, come on. They lived life. We don't have a bunch of sermons. We have conversations that were remembered. Were there moments where He's teaching a crowd? Yeah, He was referred to as a rabbi. And so, yeah, there is some teaching function. Nothing wrong with that. But it wasn't some presupposed habit. There was directive and a present tense of what God was up to in a message He was declaring in the kingdom was what He was talking about as opposed to, hey, y'all remember to come back next week. It was a life to be lived inside a different reality. And when we try to put that into just a service, it's never going to rise to what it needs to be. And nothing that can't be positive things have. It's nothing that says you can't meet every week if you want to. But I think it's hard even from a Hollywood standpoint or whatever. No serial, no TV thing, nothing lasts forever. Even the best series on TV wear out eventually. And I think it's part of just wearing people out with Christianity. I'm coming back every week to another meeting. Just because. Yeah, my hunger hasn't grown where I have a question I want to ask or something I need to explore. It's just, well, I just do it every week. And it's a little bit boring. But yeah, I can get through it. It says enough. And it's like, what was the last thing that you were told that you actually applied in your life? How? Yeah. And where's the last question you genuinely got answered in your own discovery of Jesus saying, I'm stuck here. Can someone help me? And where's the where's the venue for that? And it's become so passive. We go saying, listen, a few perform. Yeah. And so I think it's I love the fact that this pastor guy, John, could sit there and say, look, if the building's valuable to you, come ahead. It's great. But it's not essential being having a nap on a hillside on a Sunday morning is just as sacred as going to a building with a group of people. And I think that's challenging for people to believe. I still think that the thing that keeps us so tethered to the obligation thing, almost invariably, is tied to the economics of running the little business of religion. If you didn't have a mortgage or a budget or a salary to pay, salary to pay. Absolutely. Then I think the demand, the mandate that we do this regularly would really unfold into let's do what gives us life. Let's do where there really is community. You know, what are what are what is God saying to us to do and to whom does that apply? And it would be a whole lot more fluid. But because there is an economy and there is a salary and there are benefits and all this other stuff that we've loaded it up that I don't think it ever intended. We have now inherited something that we must conjure people to be a part of. Yeah. And it's dangerous should they get these notions that that's not essential. That's not. Yeah. Because if it's not going to affect our bottom line, you're just going to like that's that's that's why we're tethered to it. So I love it. Gather, eat, share. Remember him. Live. Okay. That's as good a litter G as I've ever heard. Amen. Thank you for traveling with us today on The God Journey. You can join this conversation by visiting thegodjourney.com.