Sam Waldron joins us to discuss one of the critical maladies afflicting the church today. It is a matter that is addressed in the Baptist Confession of 1689 regarding the nature of the universal church verses and the local church. A misunderstanding of these two doctrines has important implications.

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Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life is dedicated to the proclamation of the sufficiency of scripture. And so Jason Dome, we have Sam Waldron with us today. How about that? It's great to be together.

Yeah, Sam is a pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church and he is a professor of systematic theology and a lot more at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. And we're really grateful for your work there and the way you've structured that whole thing. What a blessing that is. But Sam, we're here to talk about the state of the church. I dare say, you know, all of our lives, all three of us have cared very much for the church, the state of the church.

We've been part of the problem in the church, and we've prayed to be part of the solutions to the maladies that exist in the church. I'm preaching through the book of Revelation right now, and I'm going through the letters to the seven churches and you have all these comorbidities in these churches. And churches are problematic, but they also belong to the Lord and we're so thankful for the Church of Jesus Christ. So maybe Sam, you could just start and just begin to talk about some of the things that you see today in the moment that we're in now, maybe concerns that you have for the church? You know, when I think about this, my mind goes, first of all, not to our own confession, although I want to talk about that.

It goes all the way back to the early church in the Nicene Creed, and what you see in the early church in the Nicene Creed is a church-centeredness about Christianity that is more and more missing in today's Christianity and evangelicalism today. And the evidence of that is in the Nicene Creed itself, which actually has four parts. I believe in God the Father, I believe in God the Son, I believe in God the Holy Spirit, and I believe in the Church, which is very interesting, and maybe some people think that's a little overboard. I don't think it's overboard at all because the whole context of our faith in the Trinity comes out of our relationship with each other and our testimony to the one true God, the one true triune God comes out, is born witness to by the church. And I guess I bring that up because I really think that's a shocking indictment of how little the church means in modern Christianity and to many modern Christians.

Right. People today treat the church kind of like a food court. They'll pick up whatever they like and whatever they don't like, they'll kind of spit out the bones, you know, but they don't build their lives around the church. I think, you know, we've spent many years trying to urge people to make the Church of Jesus Christ the center of their life, not in the periphery, to even arrange their schedule, put the fixed points of the meetings of the church in place and unalterably in place in their lives. Like, you know, not to ask on Wednesday night, well, should I go to prayer this week?

No, but you know, to actually prioritize it above everything else. That's right. That's right. You know, and that gets us into one of the issues that the Confession raises very clearly in Chapter 20 on religious worship on the Lord's Day, there's the statement that God is to worship more solemnly in the gatherings of the church, and there's the emphasis on the setting apart of the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath. I'd like to ask a lot of Christians today, so it's the Lord's Day.

What else do you have to do that's more important on the Lord's Day than gather with God's people and worship God. And what's so important that you can't make it to do that? Or if somebody asks you to go more than an hour on Sunday morning, somehow that's some sort of terrible imposition on your liberty. Right, And I think one of the reasons it's been very easy for people to set aside the basic functions of the Lord's Day that are spelled out in the Word of God is that they don't have that view that you've just articulated. And of course, our confession explains it in pretty precise language regarding the importance of that day.

You know, if you ask yourself, What will it take to optimize for the next week? What would make the best week or what would it take to optimize? For a month or for a year or for a decade or what would it take to have the best three decades, 30 years, you get very different answers. And so the local church comes out on top in terms of optimizing for the next 30 years. But if you're optimizing the next 24 hours, you might get a different answer where the local church isn't prioritized very much.

It takes deciding or understanding that the answers to those optimizations are very different and that you really want to have the best long period of time and to organize your life for the best long period of time. The local church life shines when you start to think in those terms. Like what is good for the health of me and my family over a long period of time? The life in the local church, it's hard to find something that would matter more. Oh, absolutely.

I really resonate with what you're saying there, Jason, because I can't think of anything I'd rather do or I'd want more than to live life with my church and see God's continued blessing on the church, God making us holy, God making us one, God multiplying the church, and just living in the fellowship of love that God has created among us. I mean, there's no other context that I would rather be in. That's, if I have 30 years left, that might be a little unlikely, but I wouldn't want to spend them in the other context or place than with a local church that's striving to please God, committed to fellowship of unity with one another, committed to seeing the gospel multiply through their witness in the world. Sam, where do you see the fracture lines? In other words, the fracturing away from the doctrine of the church that we read about in our confession, the Baptist confession of 1689, Where do you see the fracture lines and departures from that doctrine?

That's a good question. And I have a very clear idea about it, but I'm trying to figure out how to articulate it the best. I mean, our confession is unique in its emphasis on the importance of the local church. Now, I don't mean to say by that that the Westminster Presbyterians didn't believe in the local church. They certainly did, and they put their faith and their belief in the local church and the importance of religious worship there in other documents.

What's unique about our confession is they took the whole issue of the local church and, in contrast, both the Savoy Declaration and the Westminster Confession placed it right there in chapter 26 and paragraphs 6 to 15 there. So you not only had the paragraphs like you do in the Westminster and Savoy on the universal church, but you have the emphasis throughout even those paragraphs, but then throughout the entire chapter on the absolute importance of the local church and of local churches associating together and cooperating that comes out through all that chapter. And I think that, maybe if I had to boil it down, I think that evangelicalism has drifted away from the priority of the local church. And even I think a lot of Baptists have drifted away from that to some degree for a view of the church that is way overboard in terms of the invisible church taking the place of the visible church. You know, the confession does teach that there is an invisible church, but only with great qualification.

I was trying to see the confessional statement on that. But I think it, as I look for it, It says, if I can get the right language here, I think that, Yeah, all persons throughout the world professing the faith, the gospel, and being in some God by Christ, and not destroying their own profession by any errors of ridding the foundation or unholiness of conversation, are and may be called visible saints, and of such, all particular churches ought to be constituted. And when that talks about the universal church or Catholic church, it doesn't use the language at first of invisible. It says, the Catholic or universal church, which with respect to the internal work of the Spirit and the truth of grace, may be called invisible. But to see how carefully they use the term invisible.

I think today people tend to think that being a part of the invisible church or the universal church is somehow good enough and local churches aren't that important. Do you think there's a connection between that inflection point in the church, to think of the church only as universal and not local. Do you think there's a connection between that and why so many pastors have been content to allow their people to live stream for a year and stay home. I think so. I think there are several problems there.

If the first one is what you've just said, I agree with that completely. The second thing is I don't think that people understand the doctrine, which I think is crucial to our Reformed Baptist tradition, the doctrine of the special presence of God in the midst of his gathered people. Yes, you can, God will use tapes and he'll use broadcasts, and there's a sense in which we can pray for and want to expect the Spirit to bless those things. But there are promises in the Word of God to the local church as the visible expression of the body of Christ, of the special presence of Christ there, even the smallest local church where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst. The church is a holy church, it's the temple of God, and the local expression of the temple of God.

And we've kind of just in the multiplication of small groups and other ministries and other things lost the special nature of the gatherings of the local church, we've lost the sense of God's special presence there, because we don't believe in that, because people don't believe in that, they don't live in light of that. What difference does it make if I go to church or not? That's really interesting to make this connection between this overwhelming view that the church is ethereal, it's non-local, it's cosmic. And so as a result, people are content to be involved in an ethereal, non-personal, non-local experience. And they like it that way, and pastors are tipping their hat to the legitimacy of it.

That's just so concerning to me. But I hadn't really thought of the fact that it might be connected to this matter of this belief, legitimate belief, in the universal church, but an over emphasis on it. Well, my thinking has been on the horizontal level. In other words, human relationships. When churches don't meet in person, the human relationships are harmed.

So my thinking has really been there, but I'm really glad that you just drew out this point about the difference between our experience of the presence of God where we're scattered out in homes just on Zoom versus being in the room together and worshiping together. It makes me think about the early chapters of Acts and the phrase one accord. There is a different experience of the presence of God that way. Yeah, and I wonder, here's what I, and there may be a tremendous proof of what we're saying right now about to happen. How many of these churches that haven't met for a year except virtually are even going to come back into existence?

I've said it publicly, we're kind of in need of new facilities or large facilities here at Grace Reformed Baptist Church. And we have the possibility of building on our property. We've learned that we have enough land to do that, but we're kind of holding off because I wonder what kind of wonderful lavish church buildings owned by liberals are, and people without a proper doctrine of the church are going to become available for a song, perhaps in the next six months to a year. Right. Yeah, that'll be very interesting.

And I think you'll probably see that as people are transitioning to virtual everything, virtual work, you know, commercial buildings. I think you'll see commercial buildings available, you know, within the next year, like never before. And it will be, hey, one of the problems with churches is that because they've been renting facilities from schools and things like that, they had tremendous difficulty meeting. They wanted to meet, but they had a hard time finding a facility where they could meet, and maybe this will turn into something good for them. I hope so, yeah.

So what else? You have this over-emphasis on the universal church and people's thinking. They don't want to become members. They'd like to show up for an hour or so and then hit the road. And in its worst manifestation, they're okay about just live streaming and being disconnected from the people of God.

You know, it's interesting, you know, I was reading, there's some statistics, you know, on podcasts and live stream, the average podcast is abandoned in 12 minutes. So we've already gone 12 minutes. They're already hanging up on us, right? They're already hanging up on us. Come on back, you know?

But you know, the same kind of thing is happening with church live stream events too, but it's worse because you got the dog walking across, the dog needs to be let out, there's a refrigerator over there, your children, you know, the diapers need changing. Well, you don't do that when you're gathered in the meeting of the church, you know. You are together. It's completely different. Yeah, that's right.

And it's, it's, There's a dynamic there. You know, one of the sad things. And, you know, we maintain, I hope, firm convictions about what church membership involves. And we actually tell people, we have two services you've got to make a commitment to come to during the week unless you're providentially under ceremony and evening worship, because we do the things there that a church must do. And we have people attending with us, and I think some of them are dear people, but they've never experienced anything more than coming Sunday morning for a little while and then going home and having the next west loop for myself, and they don't know what it's like to be a part of a church.

They don't know the blessing of it, they don't know the fellowship of it, they don't know the love that people experience in it, they don't know the sanctifying interaction, both by way of encouragement and exhortation and warning that being a part of the life of a local church can be. And they're sitting out there with their lonely and much unsanctified lives, not realizing what they're missing and not being a part of a local church. It seems like this issue of the universal church is pivotal. I know many people who have lived for many years out of kind of a personal, pietistic religion, But it's not relational and it's not structural. It's not organizational.

It's not institutional. And of course, you know, we've advocated, you know, not just the legitimacy, but the centrality of the institutional church. It isn't just a pious tistic experience. How do you see that? Oh, well, I couldn't agree more with what you're putting your finger on there.

And I think it's a part of our, even broader than that, it's not just a part of our church culture, I think it's a part of our American culture. There is a cult of informality that I think in many people's minds, they react against anything institutional, react against anything institutional, anything too organized, and they want it all to be cozy and informal and with no commitments. I don't know if it's a result of the hippie movement and the hippie generation. Love is all you need. Well, you know, love is not all you need.

You need a marriage covenant, and love is not all you need. You need a church covenant. You need covenant and commitment, committed relationships. Love is not all you need, in the old hippie sense of the word. BD Sam, it came from California.

That's like how I grew up. Sam Well, see, I just want you to know, love is not all you need. So I think all three of us are pastors who would agree, embrace the idea that the church has both the right and the responsibility to speak to the state, even to call the state to account when it departs from the Word of God. But I find myself with that being a theoretical understanding for me. In other words, I am a pastor and I'm not really doing anything about it.

Have you seen churches that you think have a greater sense of awareness of that responsibility and right than I have and are doing it well speaking to the state? Oh, well, that's a convicting thing, you know. Beyond taking our stand finally to say, we're not in armor of the government and we're not going to enforce things like mask mandates. We're not saying people shouldn't obey them. People have to make up their own mind about them.

But we're not an arm of the government. We're not gonna enforce them on our church. But I think that's something we can all do a lot better. I know of a church that sits right down the block in Sacramento from the state capitol there, and I heard the pastor of that church on a podcast talking about what they might have to do in terms of opening up for worship because the demands that the state of California was making on them were making impossible to worship. I don't know the end result of that story though.

Wow. Well okay so we've about run our time out here. I'm you know I think the the heart of our conversation really had to do with a misunderstanding of the nature of the church by embracing really just one aspect of the universal church neglecting the local nature of the church, the church gathering together like in 1 Corinthians 11, they gathered together when you gather together in one place. You know how pivotal that is. Sam, just one last thought.

We've just got a minute left. What would you say to pastors and church people about this matter of the universal and the local church and try to recover really a sense of local church life. Just what would you say? Well, I would certainly want everybody to know that the doctrine of the universal church is both confessional and biblical. I certainly believe it, but the problem is people always going to extremes and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

But the doctrine of the local church is also biblical, and it is the local church that's the only appointed visible local manifestation of the church in the world today. You know, parachurch ministries and all sorts of other ministries, good, bad, or indifferent, good, bad, or ugly, are not the church, and they're not the visible manifestation of the Church of Christ of the World. That is the local church, and without vital participation in it, We are hamstrung spiritually. We're not going to experience the blessing and the encouragement and the sanctifying effects that God intends for people by being part of the local church. Amen.

Amen. Well, thank you so much for joining us on this broadcast. What a blessing it is that the church, the pillar and ground of the truth exists in local communities and that these pillars exist, and we so pray for the prosperity of local churches. So thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. I hope to see you next time.

Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.