Theology in the Raw - 698: #698 - Church membership, coming out, and why the Bible is so complicated.

Episode Date: October 5, 2018

On episode #698 Preston gives you a teaser of what is inside his Patreon membership. This teaser includes a clip of Preston responding to questions giving by his Patreon supporters. To support Theology in the Raw for as little as $5/month and access this (and other) Patreon-only podcast(s), go to https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

What is church membership even for? When should you come out as gay? And why is the Bible so complicated? These are the questions that my Patreon supporters wanted me to address. And so this is a short teaser episode of a Patreon-only podcast. If you want to access the full-length episode, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in raw. Support the show and you get access to premium content like this episode. Here's the one main reason why church membership can be a really good thing, church membership can be a really good thing is that it helps the leadership identify who they are spiritually responsible for. Membership helps the church leadership, the pastors, the teachers, the elders, the overseers to identify who they are spiritually responsible for.

This was brought to light several years back when a pastor friend of mine, he didn't give me his permission to mention his name, so I'll keep him anonymous. You know who you are. Pastor friend of mine was sitting down with a believer in the church, and the believer was, he was doing something that was, I think it was maybe going to kind of divorce his wife or maybe having an affair. They're doing something that was like just blatantly wrong. And he had been at the church for a long time and been consistent, but involved in everything. And the pastor sat down and talked with them and confronted

them on these things. Or maybe again, I can't remember the exact situation. Maybe it wasn't a fallen confrontation, but basically drawing attention to something he was doing in his life that it wasn't reflective of Christ. And the guy kind of shrugged his shoulders and says, well, okay, I don't care what, like, I don't care what you think. Like, who do you think you are? You know?

And the pastor said, well, I mean, don't you see me as, don't you see me as like your spiritual authority on some level? And the guy said, well, no, I mean, you're just a pastor at the church that I attend. And he kind of threw my pastor back a little bit. He's like, well, wait, so this guy just, he's involved, he's going, he's attending, he's whatever, but he doesn't see me as his spiritual overseer at all. And he's like, that's just kind of odd. Like, why am I even here? Why am I investing time and energy into trying to shepherd you and you don't see me as your shepherd? And then that kind of threw him into a conversation about, I think we need to have some sort of membership.

And then there's a lot of backlash with the church. A lot of people are like, I'm not signing anything. I hate membership. And why do I need this? And, um, but his whole argument was, I, I, he goes, I thought I knew, but I guess I don't, I don't know who are the people that I'm spiritually responsible for that providing spiritual oversight to. If you want to access this podcast, we go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw and support the show for as little as five bucks a month.