Theology in the Raw - Do Christians Need to Go to Church? Jonathan Griffiths

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Jonathan Griffiths is pastor of Metropolitan Bible Church in Ottawa, Canada and leads Encounter the Truth, a media ministry that broadcasts on radio and podcasts across the U.S. and Canada. In his recent book, Gathered for Good: God’s Good Design for the Local Church, he addresses the need for in-person gathering with empathy and authority, and encourages believers to commit to their local church community as a way to deepen their spiritual growth. Join the Theology in the Raw community for as little as $5/month to get access to premium content at patreon.com/theologyintheraw  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Raw. My guest today is Jonathan Griffiths, who is a pastor of Metropolitan Bible Church in Ottawa, Canada. He also leads Counter the Truth, a media ministry that broadcasts on radio and podcasts across the US and Canada. His, in his recent book, Gathered for Good, God's Good Design for the Local Church, he addresses the need for in-person gatherings. Okay. So that's the topic of our conversation. Can you be a Christian and not go to church? Which is what we opened up, the question we opened up with in this conversation. And that led us down to all kinds of different topics related to local church, local church involvement,

ministry, and so on and so forth. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Jonathan Griffiths. Hey, Jonathan, welcome to Theology in the Raw. I have a question for you. Can someone be a Christian and not go to church? I get this question all the time. Would love to hear how you would respond to that. Oh, thanks, Preston. Great to be with you. I mean, it's a question I hear too, and it's an interesting one. And, you know, on one level, do we need to attend church to be saved? Is that what the Bible says?

Well, no, I don't think so. We need to trust in the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins to be saved. But having done that, why would we not want to be part of his family and part of his community, and why would we not want to be investing ourselves in serving his people? If we've been bought at a price, we want to be asking, well, how do I serve the Lord Jesus and his people? And I look to the pages of his word, and he says, you know, you make a point of encouraging brothers and sisters in Christ and being of service to the work of the kingdom. And so, absenting myself from Christian community is not going to help me do that, and it's

certainly not going to help me grow as a Christian. Well, what about, what if someone said, okay, yes, Christians were saved into a community, you can't be a Christian apart from community. Salvation isn't just our individual, you know, it's a corporate, you know, we're saved into a corporate entity. But what if someone said, I have my own Christian community, I get together with my friends, we talk about spiritual things, we even read the Bible together, but I just, I can't stand or can't be a part of the institutional church, you know? And I'm sure you and everybody else knows what is meant by that. Like, is the concept of church limited to the so-called institutional church? Can someone just say, hey, by group of Christian friends, that is

my church? Yeah, it's an interesting question. And I hear similar things, and always there's a background to it, right? And we can talk about that, but people have their own stories and their own experiences. And sometimes the driver behind that is things have gone really wrong and someone's been really hurt and they've seen some terrible things and all the rest. And sometimes someone's just very independent minded.

You know, they actually just don't love gatherings of, you know, they don't love institutions, they don't love big gatherings and there are a whole lot of other, so it can be a whole lot of reasons, you know, they actually just don't love gatherings of, you know, they don't love institutions, they don't love big gatherings, and there are a whole lot of other, so it can be a whole lot of reasons, you know, people might have that perspective or be asking that question. And it's important to dig into that a little bit in conversation. But I think, you know, we need to give consideration to the fact that the Bible does have a design for church and sets out a pattern for church life. There's lots of flexibility within it. You know, there are lots of different types of churches in the world, and I think the New Testament gives us scope to believe that there can be lots of different types of churches.

But there will be certain markers of a true church. You know, those can be very informal, but, you know, we do need the preaching of the Word of God, and we do need the ordinances or the sacraments, and we do need some kind of recognized, accountable leadership structure which also gives accountability to those within the fellowship. And the New Testament in different places sketches out some of these basics for us. And it can look different in different places for sure, but if there's no preaching of the Word of God, if there's no Lord's Supper, if there's no baptism, if there's no leadership structure, which would be recognizable to the New Testament, you start to get to a place where it may be community, and we often use

that language, Christian community, it may be community, but it's not church, and the Bible actually does have a design for church. Pete Would you take like the, I know a lot of people go to like Acts 2 42 as kind of the base level structure, the apostolic teaching, prayer, fellowship, which I think in that context is almost like the sharing of goods and prayer or the prayers. I think that's a snapshot into the early life and development of church life, but I don't think it gives us all the information we need. We were given the epistles to tell us about church life and church structure, and the epistles tell us a huge amount.

You think of Titus where Paul says to Titus, I've left you in Crete so that you can settle what remains to be put in order and get an eldership in place in this church. People have been evangelized, there's Christian community, but it's an incomplete church because the leadership piece is not fixed. And actually, in all the epistles, we see different pieces of the picture of church life and the design of the church according to the plan of God. And so we want to take the whole Council of God on this and look at the full picture of the New Testament for what church is about, what church is like, and what makes for a healthy church. is about, what church is like, and what makes for a healthy church. And if we ignore any of those pieces, we start to see the trouble that follows. Yeah. Do you see any validity? Well, you kind of mentioned in the past thing that there's many different models, there's a lot of flexibility. Do you see one model being better than the other? Like, let's just take, you know, mega church

versus house church, or would you see both as, you know, I mean, obviously some house churches are good, some are not good, some mega churches are doing great things, some are doing terrible, you know. But the model itself, do you see one better than the other or no? It's really interesting.

And we're having some of those conversations even here in our church in Canada. I mean, I guess we're a mega church and we're growing and we're having some of those conversations even here in our in our church in canada. I guess we're a mega church and we're growing and we're having these conversations like is it good to become a larger mega church or is that something we shouldn't want to be. You know those are really interesting conversations and again. I don't think the bible mandates or gives us a value judgment about bigger or smaller. I think you can have a very, very unhealthy tiny church, and you can have a very, very unhealthy mega church, and you can have a sweet fellowship which is small and is healthy and nurtures believers and cares and teaches the Word of God faithfully, and you can have

a mega church that I think is really healthy. And, you know, we see in our context, we love a lot of what's going on and we rejoice in it. Not perfect, but we see good within it, you know. So I don't think the Bible gives us that kind of a mandate, but it is interesting in different cultural moments, I think, and in different places as well. Certain biases creep in. So, you know, I'm in my early 40s when I was just starting out, you know, in theological study and starting out in ministry.

You know, you were only faithful in certain circles. You were only faithful if you're into church planting. And if a church gets more than like 150 people, this is really problematic. You're you're I'm not sure how faithful that can be, sort of thing. Whereas you go back 20 years before that, I think it was the bigger the better in most circles. I think neither of those is correct, but both have their place. And one of the things I notice is that in an ecosystem of churches in a region or in a city, different sized churches and different types of churches have different niches of ministry and can do different things.

And if they're willing to work together, they can actually support and help and encourage one another and there can be a kind of symbiotic relationship, which can be really healthy. But of course, that doesn't happen everywhere and in every place for sure. Yeah. I went through a season in my life where I was much more negative or at least skeptical of the benefits of a mega church. It just seemed like there were a lot more negatives

that came out. I no longer feel that way, largely because I'm in a lot of, maybe not bigger churches, some mega, you know, around the country. I've just seen such positive examples of humble leadership, non-personality driven, you know, they're doing amazing work in the community. They're being generous. They're not all about just cranking out Sunday services, although that's an important part of a mega church especially. But I've just seen so many exceptions to the stereotype of mega churches. So I no longer have an anti-mega church bias. Having said that, that church plant that is

really focused on 50, 100, 150, it does not want to get bigger than that, or they multiply if they get bigger. Man, I still do see a sweet... Like the potential for robust discipleship, genuine authentic community, meaningfulness, relational connectedness, which is so vital, right? So, when we talk about we can't be individual Christians, we are saved in community. Well, that's not, I mean, you could attend a church service for 20 years and not be in community really, just because you're sitting next to another believer singing the same songs doesn't mean you have any kind of relationship. So, I don't know, like I, in terms of fostering rich, meaningful community, do you see the smaller church as, man, there's definitely some payoffs to that?

I think so one of the weaknesses of a large church is that it is possible to avoid community connection for a long time. And if you want to do that, if you're someone who's wanting to hide, okay, go to a big church because you'll be much more successful. And we noticed in a large church that we do have more of that than we would like to see. And actually that was one of the reasons that prompted me to do some of the work on the book we're going to talk about. But it was seeing that that was going on.

I think there are ways to counteract it. I think one of the benefits in a small church is you can't hide and I would add to that as well you can't avoid serving. So you know before we came to Canada my wife and I are kids we were part of a small church plant in London in the UK. It was 120 people on a good Sunday and we met in a school hall and if you were the person who stood there and didn't help put the chairs away at the end, it's embarrassing. Like you can't do that. You have to because everyone's doing it.

And you know, if you're the person who's not willing to host a small group or to, you know, contribute to the Sunday School teaching ministry or whatever, whatever it is, it's kind of everyone's looking over thinking why aren't you involved? And that's really good for us because we're called to serve. In a large church it's possible to hide. I think the large church brings its own advantages in terms of you've got agent stage ministries that can meet people in different stages of life and in seasons of need. You can serve the wider community in some slightly more significant ways because you have more resources.

And I think often, you know, I mean, we hear the horror stories of things going wrong in mega churches, but the truth is, if a church has grown to be large, it's normally because its structures have been pretty robust and well designed. And there are good accountability structures and the good financial management structures and good abuse prevention structures that have shown themselves to be robust and garnered the trust of a lot of people. And often, I mean, what we find is in where folk have had an experience of something going really wrong in a small church or a new church plant.

They come to us or come back to us for a season of healing or a break because we're kind of known as being steady and safe, actually. Yeah. You know, and I think large churches often are that actually, not always, but often are. And that's a strength. So, your book, I gathered for good. It came out just a few months ago. What led you to write this book? Did it have to, I mean, I'm going to, well, I'm going to guess it had something to do with pretty massive change in church life after COVID. I mean, most churches have seen a decline in attendance. I've seen some that have ended up taking it largely because people left, at least in the US, they left the church probably for political reasons. So some very politically

oriented churches gathered some people. But for the most part, churches have saw a massive decline and that hasn't really picked up. A lot of people going online in 2020, they kind of stayed online. Have you seen that trend as well? Or what they get? I guess two questions. Talk to us about the church post-COVID and then how is that related to your book? Well, I mean, the story of the book began pre-COVID, but it was shaped by COVID.

And I'll say something about that. Our experience post-COVID has been really interesting. People were slow to come back. And we wondered, people really loved online actually. And we had great online participation, but a lot of people spent a long time online, longer than they needed to. But in the last couple of years,

church attendance here has not only come back, it has roared back, and we've had significant growth even off the baseline of pre-COVID. Just in our context, and that growth has been driven in a significant way by young adults and quite a number of young men. It's been really interesting, and we're seeing a lot of people, I think, coming to faith and getting baptized post-COVID. So it feels like something's really opened up in the last couple of years and that's been really encouraging, but COVID brought its own chaos. The book, it originated pre-COVID and to tap into our discussion earlier, what I was noticing in our church was that it was becoming very, very clear that we had a pretty small core of people within our church who were absolutely committed to the

life of the church, who were there every Sunday, who were involved in small group ministry, who were serving, who I think were giving, who were just who were there, and who were participating. And then we had a very, very large fringe or periphery, who dipped in and out, who liked the Sunday experience. And I that terminology bothers me, but you know what I mean, and couldn't really be relied upon for very much. And that was bothering me, it was bothering our leadership, our eldership. It was noticeable and I thought we really need to address this.

And so I began giving some thinking to that theologically and biblically and I began doing some teaching and some preaching around why does actually the life of the church and the community of the church matter and why should you not simply be a spectator but you should be involved and commit yourself to this in service and in fellowship and in every way. So I was starting to work on that and actually I look back in the calendar and I was teaching and preaching on these things in January and February of 2020. So this was just before COVID really broke in March. And I'm so grateful I did because it meant for us we had a bit of a foundation for church is important. We're about to get scattered

here, but don't forget the church really matters. But then during COVID, you know, we went online and most churches got good at doing online stuff. We got good at it. You know, we went online and most churches got good at doing online stuff. We got good at it. You know, we went out and bought all new cameras and all new production equipment and we set up a production studio and we did all this stuff that churches were doing and we figured out the online thing I think pretty well. People missed getting together, but they loved the online thing. Why, why is that?

I mean, I mean, some hated it, of course, but a lot of people loved it. And I think the idea, hey, look, first of all, Sunday morning, I'm not dragging the kids out. It's not another stress morning. We're going to hang at home. We're going to have brunch. We're going to turn on the TV at 11. We're still going to be in our pajamas. We're going to sit there with our Bibles on the couch and it you know, this is gonna it's family time This is great And and then we've got the rest of the day and and we haven't had any stress or hassle people didn't disappear They were still giving actually that was really interesting

I thought I thought giving was good people were still there, but they were loving me online and when the restrictions were all lifted Some people were back immediately. They were like I've been dying for this but they were loving me online. And when the restrictions were all lifted, some people were back immediately. They were like, I've been dying for this. But a lot of people were not in a rush to get back. And that itself kind of disturbed me. Because it said to me, you know, we are taking a little bit of a consumerist approach to the product of church i like the music i enjoy that i want a good preach on sunday i maybe want to be able to access my small group bible study on zoom on wednesday night. I'm basically want to receive products of ministry. ministry. But getting back in person and making the drive in and you know, being uncomfortable in a crowd if COVID has kind of freaked me out and all these things, I'm not

sure I wanted the hassle. And so it was, it took us a couple of years to see everyone again, really. And I think a lot of churches found that I mean, some people never came back, but a lot of churches were finding that. And so that got my mind back to some of the thinking I'd been doing pre-COVID about what church is and why it matters and what it means to be a good church member, whatever that means in your context. And I felt, yeah, we really need to address this and we need to put some convictions in place. Because ultimately, you know, people's behavior will be driven by conviction and what they believe is important. And for Christians, you know, what we believe the Word of God tells us is

important. So that's where the book came from, really. I could see an argument from both directions for why people didn't come back. Some people could say, well, that's the person's fault. The fault is with them. They were spectators and now they can just spectate from their living room. They're like, hey, what's the difference? But then the other argument could be, could the blame be on the leaders that have created an environment that has wired people for spectatorship? You know what I mean?

They've created an environment where one's online experience is largely the same as one's in-person experience. You come, you sit, you stand, you sing, you receive the Word of God, close in prayer and go home. You haven't really done anything. And if a church is built around like a Sunday service, then I, you know, I don't know, if I put on different hats, I can put on the leader hat and I'm kind of frustrated and you need to be more involved, but then I can put on the other hat and I'm like, church doesn't feel any different, except that I'm not physically here, but it's kind of largely

the same thing. I'm just passively receiving what you guys are feeding me. So who's the blame here? You raise a fair point, Preston. And I think to some extent, people in my position, church leaders, pastors, we've got to own a little bit that we've probably spent a lot of time trying to make church work for people and wanting to make people feel comfortable and enjoy and appreciate church and maybe not doing two things.

Number one, building in the convictions about why it matters to participate and contribute to church and really what church is theologically. We maybe just haven't done the teaching and also we maybe haven't given the challenge to be more than consumers of ministry products. Maybe in the desire to attract people and to make them feel comfortable, we haven't challenged people enough. So I think we want to own that too. And I think it's a valid point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it depends. I mean, there are churches that do put a lot of energy into Sunday service, and maybe it is largely passive for 98% of the people attending,

but some of those same churches also provide many, many other opportunities for other kinds of engagement in the community, other ways to exercise your gifts, other ways to contribute, other ways to serve. And people still don't take the leadership up on that, those opportunities, you know? And I've been in that seat, you know, I'm like, you know, looking at all these options of involvement, I'm like saying no to all of them

for whatever reason, some of it's, you know, I just either don't have the time or it doesn't fit with my gifting or whatever. But yeah, I could see the frustration from leaders saying, all right, we've provided you 27 different opportunities to not just attend a Sunday service. And if you're not taking us up on that, it's part of it. I mean, there is this busyness of people too, right? And again, I can speak from my own experience. There's been seasons, many seasons where I'm like, I can't take on anything more given the things I'm doing.

Now I happen to be busy with quote unquote, you know, ministry type things. So I can give myself a free pass, you know, I'm still contributing to the kingdom of God. But you know, other people, you know, they're working two jobs or they're a single mom or, you know, and they just, they, they just don't have the time to do anything more than attend a passively attend a Sunday service. How do you, how do you respond to that? Like I, you know, when, when somebody's busy-ness is preventing them from more, more involvement. And I mean, let's, you know, let's be honest, I think there has been something of a busyness shift in our culture. Something's happened and there are a whole range of factors behind it.

But I remember my childhood and what it was like in terms of church involvements. And it was just normal to go morning and evening and midweek and for Sunday to be taken up. I mean, in my home, we had people rounds for lunch and through the whole afternoon, Sunday, many, most weeks, you know. And the number of hours given over to church involvement and to ministry a generation back. And I look now and most churches have concluded they cannot run a Sunday evening service because people can't give the time to it.

Yeah. And midweek is tougher. And look, I think you've got you've got economic shifts that say people are struggling to make ends meet. And so you you need you need two incomes in the family. It's different. Electronic communication means that the day actually stretches a lot and people are engaged in work well beyond work hours and we're distracted with more things as well. But there is something about availability. There's something that's shifted and that is true. And one of the things we want to make sure we do is when we call people to serve and we call them to involvement, we're not asking people to be involved in church life five nights a week, and to sacrifice family life or to kill themselves to do that. So we need, you know, as church leaders, we need to be sensitive to people's realities and not call them to a place of involvement that's going to be detrimental to their well-being. Some churches have done that, you know, and I think it's possible to do. But nonetheless, I think this needs to be vision-led in terms of this isn't just a legalistic obligation to be involved in the life of the

church. And if you're a good Christian, you're going to be doing X, Y, and Z, and this is going to be. No, we've got to have a vision for what church is, the Christian fellowship is, the Christian community is, in the greater plan of God for the world. And we need to locate our local church and its life and its activities within something bigger. And we've got to cast vision for that and a vision that people will believe and internalize and catch and want to be part of. And, and there, there are different pieces of that. There's regular teaching and there's, there's something visionary and gospel-y about that.

And if there's none of that, if it just boils down to a series of obligations, I think you lose people anyway. Do you find that there is a challenge, a post-internet challenge of people, like well-meaning Christians who are wanting to follow Jesus, they want to study the Word of God, they want other discipleship opportunities, where prior to the internet, you had to kind of go to church to get that. Now, every preacher is competing with thousands of better preachers than them, you know? Just with podcasts and

sermons available, some of the best communicators in the world. And like, I would find that to be challenging. If I was like the pastor of people, not as many people are showing up, it's like, well, yeah, but they're getting sermons all week long, some of them at least, you know? Like, how do you, is that just the age we live in? Like, how do we get around that? I mean, yeah, I don't think we get around it. And I try to rejoice in it. I mean, you know, I know folk in our church, I mean, they listen to maybe some people I wouldn't think are so great, but they listen to some great people too. And I think, I mean, they listen to maybe some people I wouldn't think are so great, but they listen to some great people too. And I think, I mean, praise the Lord, they're getting other Bible input. But what I want to be able to say to people is, you know, church isn't simply about getting

some Bible input. Because you get that from reading a book, you could get it from a podcast. But gathering together with a group of people who are part of your fellowship and together sitting under the word of God from someone who knows you or at least knows the community, if not you personally, and who loves you and is speaking to you, and then being able to hear that word together and receive it and live it out together, that's a whole other experience and it's a whole other theological reality. And so again, what I want to be doing is encouraging our people to see, encouraging myself to see, the church is not simply about receiving ministry products or consuming ministry products. But

you know, we North Americans, I mean, whether you're Canadian or American, we're great consumers. I mean, we're the world's best consumers. We're so good at it. And I think we really do actually approach church life in our natural selves as consumers thinking, you know, what am I going to get here? And is it going to be good enough? And if not, I'll get what I need elsewhere, right? Do you think the church needs to make any structural changes in light of our new, make any structural changes in light of our new, very new cultural era we're in? You know, like, I mean, again, prior to the internet, prior to all this stuff, you got a 40-minute sermon, 45-minute sermon, three or four worship songs, some prayers, maybe

communion or something. Like, should we be doing those exact same things the same way we did in 1987? Like, should the church not really change in that sense? Or are there some changes that it could make to better meet people in our really new and challenging cultural moment? I mean, there is an essential simplicity to what happens in church, which is passed down through the ages and I think is grounded in the Word of God. So the physical gathering together, the hearing of the Word of God and the preaching of the Word of God, prayers, the singing of God's praise, the sharing in the Lord's Supper. These essential components

are biblical. I mean, we can trace them in the New Testament, and they have been essential to church life down through the last 2,000 years of church history. And there's something about those that just transcend culture. They cut right through. Now, the way in which those are packaged and experienced, the type of songs we sing, some of the ways in which we might communicate in preaching, the physical spaces in which we gather and the numbers in which we gather in the context and so on, those move around. But I think there is something unchanging about the core elements of it. And I think that is by design. about the core elements of it. And I think that is by design.

I think they cut through culture. Have you guys made any post-COVID shifts to the way you guys do ministry at your church? Yeah, that's a great question. The Lord's Supper, we use those old plastic units because everyone's still touchy about anything that's high touch. We haven't changed tons post COVID. We make more available. I mean, one of the decisions we had to make coming out of COVID was do we cut the online stuff completely? So some churches did. They said, look, we don't like this. Convictionally,

you know, we're once once all restrictions are done and people's genuine health concerns are gone, once all restrictions are done and people's genuine health concerns are gone, we're cutting this, so you gotta come back. We had a bit of a debate about that, and we have kept that going, and have leaned into our electronic online ministries since COVID, for two reasons. Number one, we've discovered that it's a great front door or shop window for people who are exploring the faith and who are on the edge of going to church. Spending a month or six months or a year watching a service or a midweek thing, we find people then come through the doors often, and they might not have made that journey in if they hadn't had the opportunity for exposure in that way. So we like that and we value it. We think it does make it easier for people to make a start with us. The other huge thing is just our shut-ins ministry. So

when we thought about canceling it and you know shut-ins and elderly people who can't get here physically were saying to us this has just been wonderful. You know we've never had this before, but the quality of engagement and being able to see and sing along and see people's faces on the camera and feel like I'm right there with the preaching, this has been wonderful for me. Please don't get rid of it. And we recognize that's a significant community for us.

And so we've kept that. So we do now have these pretty vibrant electronic digital ministries, which we are maintaining. And that's a post-COVID thing. But yeah, I don't think we haven't fundamentally changed church off the back of it? I saw some benefits to going online during COVID. One that really stands out, you know, churches that, you know, they were doing more video-based stuff, more online things. In a sense, people had almost more access to the pastors and leaders of the church. Obviously, it's through video, it's not one-on-one,

but the pastor can't be one-on-one with it, you know, too many people. But I think people found that like, rather than just seeing my pastor once a week on a stage, man, I saw him throughout the week giving devotionals, you know, doing online chats, you know, Zoom chats or whatever. And it's all, some people said,

I feel like I was engaged with my leadership much more than I was prior to, you know, COVID on some level. We found some of that and some of that is carried on through that we use much more video communication with the church family through the week and so on, which we wouldn't have done before at all. I mean, my church board made me go on social media during COVID. So I'm kind of a Luddite. And I look at so I mean, it was Twitter then, right? But I looked at all that was going on there. And I really didn't like it. You know, I just so much backbiting and stuff. And so I'd actually I had no social media accounts ever like at all. And so I you know, that real Luddite and during covid my church board said look if you would

go on social media now it would provide another access point for the congregation. I'll just take a touch point of people so knowing what you're up to and what you're thinking about in this kind of thing and so i did it for reason. And like with that design very much in mind, and went on a couple of platforms in a very gentle, not clever, professionalized way. But it actually did for our church family, for a number of people who were in that space, it did actually build connection. And I, I think they felt like they knew me a bit better. And as they were reacting to stuff and engaging this stuff, I felt like I knew me a bit better and as they were reacting to stuff and engaging with stuff, I felt like I knew them a little bit more too. So it did that for me,

but that was more just personal and it was a shift only because I'm a Luddite basically. I had one pastor, I think this might have even been before COVID, where he started to spend more time on the social media accounts of his congregants. And he had to stop these nice, cheery people on Sunday morning, whatever. He would see them throughout the week posting political rants and just saying nasty stuff. And he saw a whole dark side of his people. And he's like, I don't know. Maybe I should, I guess, pay attention to that. But he's like, I just have to stay off of it. But I saw a little bit of that, but mostly not, mostly not. Yeah. Yeah. You Canadians, you guys pay attention to American, US politics quite a bit, don't you? Are you?

Well, yeah. What do you guys think about the politicalization of the US church? Well, it's interesting. I mean, you know, whatever happens in the US, because the relationship is close, so close and we're neighbors and you know, all of us have family in the US and lots of Canadians have a second home in the, all kinds of things. And I've got family, it's family in the US and we're up and down all the time, all the time.

So it's family in the US and we're up and down all the time, all the time. So it's very interconnected. It's always been said that, you know, when the US sneezes, Canada catches the flu. And that's right. That's right. It's been interesting with the politics for sure. Our political worlds are a bit different. And, you know, Canada leans left more, but not exclusively. I mean, there's a strong right here, but it's smaller. But yeah, I think

there's been a looking on at the political goings on in the US with a confusion and a bewilderment in some measure, but we haven't been able to escape all of it. I think what's different though here, and this is kind of a mercy, is there is actually a much stronger separation of politics and church in Canada, and that's actually quite a rigid separation.

It's very, very touchy to bring a lot of political activism into the church in Canada. So my congregation would not tolerate, will not tolerate much of any of it. And so one of the things that bewilders Canadian Christians or surprises Canadian Christians is seeing quite so much political discussion within the churches and even from pulpits in the US. That's quite foreign to Canada, for good and for ill. I mean, there are positives and negatives, but it's a different culture, I think. Yeah. Do you think, because you guys all have like a

two-party system like we do, right? Like where you had the Republican, Democrat, just like massive fighting and split and everything that a lot of churches go through. It's functionally two party, but it's, um, but, but because the other parties are so small. So we've got, we've got a conservative party and a liberal party, conservatives, right wing, liberal left or center left really. Um, and then a bunch of smaller parties, but they don't, they're not waiting.

So it always comes down to the two. But people will not, in the same way, identify holistically with a party. And you won't split a church down the middle over it or something like that. But somehow the politics become less central to church life and to Christian community here. People keep that a little bit quieter. It may be, honestly, because the culture here has moved further and further away from the gospel. We know that whatever party you're going to vote for, it's not going to be the Christian party. That's not going to happen. It doesn't exist. So you've made your peace with that already and you're a Christian living in a foreign land.

Um, there's that recognition, which is pretty robust in Canada. And I know it's, I know it's different. I mean, you know, I'm involved in Christian media. And so most years I go to the national religiousigious Broadcasters Convention down in the US. And I mean, last year, President Trump came and addressed us at the NRB. That would not be the way it would go in Canada. Not our world. Yeah.

That's so refreshing. I mean, I think a lot of pastors are listening on with envy. That was by far the biggest challenge to pastors in the US during COVID was the politicalization of everything and the divisiveness along political lines. People were leaving churches in droves, maybe going to other churches, not necessarily leaving the church, but leaving churches. And it was largely, largely had nothing to do with theological or pastoral disagreement. It had to do with politics or culture war stuff, which can be frustrating. So, so many pastors burnt out and it was just, yeah, it was just so, so difficult. I mean, that happened up here, but it was, it was, I mean, there were differences of opinion within churches about COVID response.

And that caused big division. But it wasn't so much about which political party do you support or something like that. It was simply, are you playing ball with government health mandates? Or are you rebelling against them and keeping your church open when the government asks you to? These sorts of things. And then you got divisions within churches and divisions among churches around that. So it had a political element to it, but it wasn't about which party are you associated with in that same way. But it was stressful and people for sure burnt out over it. It was a hard time.

Yeah. It's a hard time. Going back to kind of our original conversation, getting people involved, it's kind of a truism, right? That like 100% of the work is carried out by less than 20% of the congregation or whatever the percentages are. How do you get people more involved so they're not just attending a service? I would imagine, especially if it's a big church, that's got to be a challenge.

Is there a way to get people involved rather than just beating them over the head, guilt tripping them into being involved? I mean, there are some people who just love to be involved in community and love to be active. So whether they're part of the local curling club or part of the local church, they're just going to be all in because they're all in type people in community. But there'll be some people who are very introverted or very busy or very reluctant for a whole lot of reasons. And to get people like that involved in serving, I think again, it's got to come from conviction and vision. So it's got to come from a vision that says we are involved

in the most amazing project in the history of the universe. And God has called us to be co-workers with him in the work of the gospel and bringing the good news of Jesus to a lost and a dying world. And we've all got a part to play in that. We've all been gifted, and this is exciting. And the vision needs to be cast for it actively. But I think that also there needs to be biblical conviction in terms of, yeah, we were bought with a price, and the Lord has a calling on our lives, not for holiness, but also then for service, self-sacrificial service. for holiness, but also then for service, self-sacrificial service. And the Lord Jesus has a work for you to do and for me to do, and we are His servants in the world, and this is what it looks like to self-sacrificially serve in the life of the local church.

And so I think we've got to be casting vision and building conviction around it, as well as just capturing the people who love to be involved and will show up for everything. Because gloriously, there are those people and they're such a treasure in the church. But there will be lots who need to be helped to see why. And it's got to be part of our discipleship to do that, I think. One of the frustrations I think people have, I think it's legitimate, and I don't know the answer to it, but sometimes churches define service or involvement in terms of kind of a narrow set of pre-scripted avenues that are local church- focused, largely Sunday morning focused. You know, you need to be involved,

you need to serve, so you can be an usher or you can pass out plates, you can clean up after the service, you can volunteer in kids ministry, you can do all these things. But people might be doing all kinds of amazing things in the kingdom of God, but they're made to feel like they're not involved. Like I've got a friend, he's probably listening, you know, he drives an Uber in Chicago. He's a white, older white guy, and he purposely goes to South Chicago, which is largely not older white guy. And he does it specifically to have gospel centered conversations with people.

And he'll drive in the middle of the night. It's super dangerous. I mean, it's not, and he'll show up at it, especially if it's a African-American, you know, who booked an Uber, he's shocked that this white driver actually took his, you know, took the collar, whatever it is, you know, and just that alone. He's like, how come you actually want to pick

me up? You know, like that alone is like, that's service, that's ministry. And then the car, and this guy's very, you know, just a wonderful guy, very relational. And by the end of that car ride, he's probably talked about Jesus to that person. You know, He does that sometimes all night long or many other. I mean, I can think of so many examples of people that are like, truly serving the kingdom of God, loving others, helping, like in Boise, we have a big refugee resettlement population that the government has pulled. So, a lot of churches are stepping in and Christians are doing things. And it oftentimes it's not even like a church might not even have any kind of ministry towards refugees, even though

several people in the congregation are heavily involved in the lives of refugees. So I was at a church a while back that they had everybody, it was kind of like getting people to serve, you know, they had everybody stand up in the church that was serving the church. And like my whole family sat because we were like, we're not served the way you've defined service. We're not doing it. Even though I spend my whole life, I mean, and my wife, like we are, all we do is ministry. And we sat there, like, we felt almost like the shame, like, you know, looking at all these people serving, like,

I guess I'm not, I'm not passing out bulletins. I'm not, I'm not serving, you know, like, like, I guess I'm not passing out bulletins. I'm not serving. I don't know about that. That's a question. Maybe it's just kind of mediating way, but maybe some people are listening or feeling. I mean, how do you respond to that? How can a church maybe validate many other ways of serving and being involved in sacrifice and that may not be specifically tailored to the maintenance of the local church. Yeah, that's a good question. And I mean, the dream is, right, to have disciple believers who are engaged in all forms of different ministry and just being Christians in the community and bearing witness to Christ in the spheres of influence that the Lord has given to them. And we want to rejoice in that and celebrate that.

It's a good question, you know, how structurally do we celebrate it? So we don't want to be restrictive that the local church is the only locus of Christian service, not at all. If that was true, we wouldn't have missionary organizations, we wouldn't have parachurch organizations, we wouldn't have any kind of community engagement

necessarily. That having been said, I think there is a benefit and I think a blessing that comes from even if one is very involved in ministry elsewhere and outside the church, if this is your church family in your church home, finding a place to invest yourself even in a small way to have that rootedness in the life of this fellowship and to build the bonds of love with these people and it's possible to be very busy outside and to be totally unavailable inside and I know even we have some missionaries who are involved

in all kinds of interesting work but who have you, their church home is here with us and they're in the church family. And I, I just rejoice in what they're doing. And I'm up to date with what they're doing in terms of their mission work. But I will also say to them, I'll sort of say, look, make a little space in the busyness of everything, make a little space for being present here and being involved here because your involvement and your experience and your wisdom poured into this fellowship is really meaningful. So I always want to give people that encouragement not to lay a burden upon them if they're hugely stretched to say, well, you've got to be on our elders board, you've got to be teaching science school, you got to be, but in some measure, even if it's as simple as hospitality in your home from time to time, and prioritizing some people from the fellowship, even at that level, which is huge, actually. But I always give that encouragement as I'm able. Pete What I would love to see, that's a great thought. What I would love to see is people that are involved outside the walls of the church, that that is somehow,

I think this is what you're getting at, that is somehow not just some isolated individual thing this person's doing, but is an extension of the church, you know? Like my buddy driving Uber, like I would love, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I would love that his church knew about that and celebrated it and prayed for him. And other people were aware of that. And maybe, I don't know if you can do this on Uber, but maybe some people can go along with him and be part of that. And maybe he can even disciple others to explore that kind of ministry, you know, as part of the church rather than a Christian doing these awesome things and who also attends this church on Sunday.

And there are ways, aren't there? There are ways of celebrating that and engaging others in prayer in it and inviting others along. And some of those will be structured and some of them will be very unstructured. But they're meaningful, right? Like those things are of huge worth. And they themselves become an encouragement to other believers to be thinking, how am I actually serving the Lord in other contexts in my everyday life? So, yeah. I think leaders, they might have to... I'm just trying to think it out loud, because there's, let's just say, a church of a thousand people. There's a decent percentage of people who are probably doing some amazing things that

the leaders, or the church as a whole, aren't even really aware of, right? So how, you know, I wonder how the leaders can invite people to view their individual ministries and missional adventures to be part of the church. Yeah, I don't know if it's an announcement or... I always go back to like, make an announcement. I don't know. Right, right, right, right. And I mean, a lot of things, especially as the numbers grow, one has to make peace with the idea of things not being structured and formalized, but being organic to because there's so much going on, you know, you, but there's some that's something beautiful about the church where you can't, you can't fit everything into a framework,

you know, the Lord's doing far more than you know, and far more than you can organize or categorize or, and that's the, that's the beautiful messiness of, you know, church life and what the Lord's doing, too. Yeah. I wonder if there is strong relational connection, especially among the leaders, maybe top leaders with the mid-level leaders to people on the ground, you know, obviously not every senior pastor is able to have the same relationship with everyone on the ground, but he can have relationship with other leaders who are in relationship with people on the ground. Sounds like a pyramid scheme, but I mean, as there's relational connectedness, there

is going to be an authentic awareness of what people are doing. And I think that could be so, I would if every Sunday you even had somebody come up and a couple minute interview, just explain what they're doing in the community and have people pray for them, just so there is just, you know, just ongoing awareness that man, it's not just the pastors that are doing ministry here. Like there's a lot of people here doing ministry and it could be inspiring for others to say, oh, I want to, you know, I would love to be involved in that way or explore ways that I could be involved in the wider community. Yeah, there's only so much you could fit in on Sunday morning.

Well, that's true. That's true. And, you know, you can't, not everything can be can be slotted into structure. It just doesn't. But the wonderful recognition is as you get to know people and hear their stories and talk with them about what they're doing and how they're serving the Lord, you discover the Lord's doing tons more than you ever knew through the people within the fellowship. And that's, it's very exciting to discover that too. Well, Jonathan, thanks so much for coming on Theology of the Lord. Again, the book is Gathered for Good. And give us just the elevator. I mean, we kind of talked around it and through

it and everything, but what is this book about? I know you do a biblical theology of church in it, as long as it's a practical thing. Jonathan It's really casting biblical vision for what the church is and why it matters. practical things? It's really casting biblical vision for what the church is and why it matters. We start with this biblical theological vision of the gathering of the people of God, kind of going back to Eden and going to the new creation. And I try to situate the life of the local church now within that big picture of what God is up to, but then try and lay down some biblical convictions for why church matters and why it matters for me as a church member to invest myself in the life of the local church, why

going alone is not sufficient and why I'm missing out if I don't throw myself in there and give it all I've got. So that's the encouragement and I trust it'll be encouragement to some who are listening now. Awesome. Thanks for being on the show, Jonathan. Great. Thank you so much, Preston. Great to be with you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.