Christians are bound to disagree about debatable matters. What matters, however, is not That they disagree, but HOW they treat one another in working through their disagreements. In this podcast, Jason and Scott dialog with Malamuolo Chindongo, in Blantyre Malawi to discuss this global problem. Col 3:12-18 is a helpful sanity check.

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Well welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of scripture. And hey, Jason, here we are. Here we go again. Hello.

With our friend Mala with our friend Mala from Africa from, from Blantyre Africa. Hello Mala. Hey Scott. Hey Jason. Hello brother.

So Mala Mala is a pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Blantyre, Malawi, and we've been working together for a lot of years. I wish we could be there a lot more. But anyway, Mala, thank you so much for joining us on this broadcast. You wrote a newsletter a while back where you were just expressing concern for disunity that's taking place in the church among pastors, particularly over COVID restrictions, how you interpret everything. And this really has been a difficult matter and I know you know on my side of the pond here here in America when things broke I've really tried to snap into action and tried to communicate on a number of different fronts.

You know, what does the Bible say about plagues? What does the Bible say about quarantine? What does the Bible say about Romans 13, government regulations? What does the Bible say about visiting the sick? How do you handle sick people?

What do you think about sick people? So I did a lot of teaching in our local church about this as well in order to try to explain that God does address particular things. And the problem with the COVID restrictions is that they touch on matters of ecclesiology. They touch on the matter of Jesus Christ and his church and the fellowship of the saints. So this is massive.

Anytime you want to tamper with the fellowship of the saints, you need to know that you are walking on holy ground because we have explicit commands for how we function in the church and we have explicit patterns in the Old Testament for dealing with disease and quarantine and things like that. So you know that's what I did in our in our local church and by the way lots of this stuff is on the church and family life website. You can go to church and family life.org and you can see those resources. There are dozens of them, short videos, and some are longer than others and written material as well. But there at least addresses, I think, you know, most of the issues that the COVID restrictions have brought to us.

At the same time, there's been division in the church. So, Mala, why did you write to all these people all over the world that you are experiencing division in the church over this issue? Yeah, so Scott, thanks very much for just, you know, some of the things that we've touched on earlier on, whole about a week ago. One of the reasons why I shared that newsletter regarding COVID-19 and what's going on here in Africa, I was concerned and I'm still I'm concerned because there is division and this is regarding government restrictions, you know, whether we obey or we don't, you know, so and beyond that is just if it's not from church to church, then it's within either eldership or just within the church. So you have churches that are losing members.

You have friendships that are being broken, and these are pastors have been working together for many years. And their differences in how to handle government regulations and how to deal with the virus within their meetings has brought massive, massive division. So yeah, I just wanted to be able to talk to friends and be able to pray with friends, be able to look at these matters. Because one of the things that I noticed also is that there is very little direction. So a lot of pastors are giving up, you know, just not giving up in the sense of the ministry itself, but giving up, you know, their daily activities, you know, whether it be evangelism, discipling their members, it's sort of a lot of pastors have taken a back seat or just waiting for this pandemic to end so they can go back to business as opposed to thinking through ways in which they can still minister and shepherd their churches in the midst of all that is going on today.

So here in Africa, particularly, there's been a lot of social media wars, you know, back and forth, debates and arguments. I think probably one of the most concerning aspects of all this has been, you know, those who are disobeying government regulations, looking at those who are probably obeying, as sometimes even calling them hirelings and calling them all sorts of names, you know, so it's been discouraging, I think, for a lot of, you know, churches, congregations across the continent. Yeah, you know, this thing about, you know, calling, you know, brethren, hirelings and things like that. I think that that really is a tragedy. In times like this, you know, men are going to have different opinions.

You know, groups of elders are going to make different decisions. And I think we need to recognize that this is how God works. You, but, but again, you have this division between people. It's one thing to have different approaches to a thing like this. It's an entirely different thing to dishonor your brothers as a result of it.

Especially something that's so new, so strange, you know, just hit it, it blindsided us. We're still trying to figure it out, you know? Yeah, I think at the beginning, all of us looked at it like a speed bump. Do you remember, I think it was March of last year, 14 days to flatten the curve is what our president and his team said. So 14 days became a month, became two months, and what we thought was going to be a speed bump has become an ongoing thing.

So really, at the beginning, I think we thought of it even in terms of our relationships within our church and between churches as something that Well, we'll we'll we'll figure out how to deal with this but in a month Maybe two months will just sort of be back to normal, but it's a year you know, we're at the year mark now and we're not back to normal. And so, the figuring out, the stakes rise. As the time horizon goes out, the stakes rise because it's not just something that if you get wrong, it just lasts for a couple of weeks. If you get it wrong now, if you feel now looking back that you got it wrong, you lost a year. And those of us who are getting older understand we don't have that many years.

We don't have years to lose, certainly. Yeah, so for me, how I look at it is, there are two things. One is the fact that, you know, some of these regulations that are coming out have to do with literally bringing to a stop what a church should look like and what should do. So, I mean, we are called to preach, to teach, to admonish one another, to sing to one another. We are called to break bread, to fellowship, to greet one another.

I was having a discussion with some pastors here, like here in Africa. Well, greeting means a long handshake. You probably have heard some of that while we're here. So governments are literally asking the church, the life of the church to stop or to cease. So we have to ask ourselves, you know, we believe God is sovereign.

We believe he's not surprised by all of this. I mean, this is God's will. This is God's coronavirus. He's on top of all this. And so why would God bring something like this that brings to a stop things that he commands us to do?

Well, we have to go to the scriptures and look at when was the last time God stopped worship? When was the last time God stopped his people from doing the things it commanded them to do? One of the places that I've been going to is Isaiah chapter one, where he's basically telling them, I don't want your worship, your offerings, your sacrifices. He tells them that, you know, the reason was they worshiped me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And so when we think of the disruption to church life, first of all, it has to stop.

Haven't we been talking about false worship in the church and across the globe? First of all, yes, it has to stop. And that gives true believers genuine churches to examine what's going on within their churches. So I've been talking to pastors and saying, I think the focus, Before we talk about government restrictions, we need to talk about what is going on in our churches. What kind of worship do we have in our churches?

Is it the kind of worship that needs to stop? Or is it the kind of worship that's worth fighting for? And I believe that genuine believers, genuine churches will stand, pray, lament, seek God's face so that genuine worship is restored or at least themselves are restored to worship. I do believe God is purging his church using all that's going on today. Secondly is forced believers.

Forced believers will delight that the government has stopped stopping churches to meet. Forced believers would delight in the activities of the church being disrupted. And that's necessarily mean every church that's looking at government restrictions and walking in obedience to the government is a false church, but at least all of this will force both believers and to examine themselves and do what is right and seek the true worship of God. On the other hand, false believers will delight in the fact that worship has been disrupted and like we've been saying that some churches have ended because they stopped meeting and after a while they don't see the point to go back and continue meeting. And the same thing with forced believers in our churches that left in fear of the virus that will never come back.

And so God is using this to purge his church, to force us to examine ourselves. And then from there, having done some sort of house cleaning, then we can go and talk about how do we respond to government restrictions? And I think the True Church is responding very well. I wanted to read Philippians 4, 6, and 7. It's really familiar territory, but let me just read it and then make a comment or two.

Philippians 4, 6, and 7, Paul writes, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." So this is really the Christian ethic and pastors should be leading churches in the Christian ethic, which is that we're not a people that are given to fretting and being anxious over things, fearing things, but actually we're a fearless people because our confidence is in God. We would rather pray than fret. We see the value in prayer over any value in fear. And I think that is what has so many of us concerned, is that fear seems to be driving so much of what's happening.

You know, the rally cry is, follow the science. It has not been follow the science, it's really been follow the fear. Fear has taken us definitely in a direction. And you can tell that by the reactions of extremely low-risk people and how anxious even they are. They're different risk profiles, obviously, and some categories of people are so risk and yet are at so low of a risk, and yet they are some of the most fearful people out there.

And church leaders actually need to address that and just call people to faith in God to set our eyes on God, who always has our best interests at heart, and to pray more and fear less. Amen. Yeah, that's been one of my concerns is that we call our people out of fear. This is, I mean, the most often repeated command in the Bible is do not fear. So there's a reason for that.

There's there are a lot of reasons that you might fear and I think you know one of my great concerns is that capitulating to the to the to the orders have really affirmed people in their fears and literally enfeebled people and made them fearful of something that is completely in God's control. And to have a people who are fearing one another rather than greeting one another like you mentioned, rather than visiting the sick like we're commanded to. That fear is driving us away from these basic Christian responsibilities in the world. Yeah. So as I've been thinking through all this as well, You mentioned, you know, on one hand we have the media feeding literally all the information that we have on this is coming through either social media or the radio or television.

And then so they know the way they just submitted that information, it's causing a lot of people to be afraid. I've been thankful for some doctors here who have focused, and I know I'd face the same doctors would just kind of share information, how deadly, how serious this is, but some of them have kind of changed the focus. And right now they've been talking more about just, you know, how this is not a death sentence. If you have it, it's not a death sentence, so you have no reason to fear. And just sharing more numbers of people that have been healed, that have come out of it.

So that's just been helpful. And I think that's the kind of information that we're not hearing. But it is the media that's driving all this fear. And so probably two things that we should be thinking about. Number one is, there can be two extremes.

We can just dismiss everything and just say, you know what, don't listen to what the media is saying and forget all that they're saying. On the other hand, we can just eat it up and just take everything they're telling us and run with it. I'm trying not to be an encouraging pastor to avoid those true extremes. Don't just eat up everything they're giving you, but also discern very well and be able to look at the details what this thing really is and be able to shepherd your people with the right information. So not being dismissive altogether, but at the same time, not just getting up or that you're being given.

Because that's really what's peddling all this fear in our churches today. It's interesting you mentioned kind of the extremes. And I think, you know, we hear, we're not COVID deniers, we're not saying that this thing doesn't exist. And we, you know, I think that in many ways we're being careful in ways that we haven't been in the past. And so we have tried to calibrate to some degree at the other time in the way, other side of the spectrum.

I saw, I saw an advertisement just last week of a website developing company that was giving out awards to churches, awards for free service to churches who, who obeyed all the government orders. And so you go in and you say, you know, if you obeyed all of these orders, they say, we want to congratulate you. We want to congratulate you personally. And we're going to discount our services 50 to 100% if you have obeyed all the government orders. It terrified me.

So you have these the spectrum, you know, it's maybe it's crazy land on both ends of the spectrum, but, you know, how do, how do we navigate? Well, even the different, maybe even regional things, Mala, it sounds like, it sounds like things might be worse in Blantyre than they are here in North Carolina. I, So I, you know, you have to figure out how to navigate that. Yeah. And I mean, when you look at it, you have, you know, you have a virus that most of the people that will get it will be, you know, they'll come out of it, you know, after about a week or two.

And the death rate is still low, you know, even here. It's when you hear people that you know that are close to you, people that are probably popular and, you know, that have died from it. And so, as you know, that's what is causing all the fear in the way the media is propagating what they're saying. But as a pastor, I have to think about, I have a church, some have strong faith, some don't, you know, so, you know, I need to take that information and find ways to encourage, you know, those who are weak at the same time, not discouraging those who are strong. But in many ways, I mean, we've had people that are some close to us that have died.

A friend of mine just lost his wife about two days ago, and his wife was the one who was actually putting my sermons on the national radio. She worked for the radio station. So, I mean, there's been people that we were close to us that have lost their loved ones. And so just to be able to balance all of that and say, hey, here's what God is doing. And if you end up with this virus, here's what will happen, at least based on the numbers that we have.

But at the same time, just knowing that for some being weak in faith and not being mature in the faith, they could be discouraged if as a pastor, I'm not probably processing all of this publicly and considering people like that in the church. You know, I think that all of us have, you know, had convictions that we should continue to church life the way that God defines it. And, you know, we've had different people with different kinds of responses to that in our churches but I think at the end of it the church must continue to be the church and do the things that the church does. At the same time, to hate our brothers who are doing things differently is sinful. I was looking at Colossians 3.12.

I'm gonna read 3.12 through 18, because I think it helps us understand at least how we should treat one another as pastors. We might do different things than our brethren, but we have responsibilities for how we treat them deep within our hearts. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which you were called in one body and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord and whatever you do in word or deed do all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through him.

I think that speaks of the disposition that we have with one another, not the position we take on a very, very shocking, strange thing that has happened to us that we're all trying to figure out. We have relational commands. Scott, I mean, the other thing that I see with all this is, the opportunity that's, that's there for the church, to, to demonstrate faith. Like you said in the beginning to call, to call, not just God's people within the church out of fear and faith, but to call the world out of fear, to faith in Jesus. I mean, this is a first time, not the first time, but this is one of those rare moments where the church and the world are kind of sharing this fear of this virus.

But it is, I mean, an opportunity for the church to be able to say, hey, here we are. Yes, understanding what's going on in the world, but beyond that, understanding what Christ has done for us. So believers like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ has overcome death. I was contemplating on John Owen's book, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ, that he has overcome death. And so the world is preoccupied and what's going to happen if I get this virus if I die you know this is a time for us to be able to say hey you could die it could happen you could die because people have died you know there's even this question of whether this virus is dead or not, but there's a sense in which it has complicated people's, you know, existing health issues.

And yes, you could die, but we can take the conversation from there and be able to say, hey, so what happens when you die? What happens when you stand before God and having lived your life disregarding him and rejecting this call of God in love for you. We have an opportunity to demonstrate that Christ, when he hung on that cross, he overcame death and he did that for you and and called people out of fear to faith because all this fear is a fear of death. It's not that people are just afraid of the virus, they are afraid because if they get it, they think they will die. So it's a great opportunity for the church.

So beyond maybe thinking about government regulations, thinking about what to do when we are called to either shut out our doors, our church meetings or not, we need to really, above everything else, call the world out of fear to faith in Jesus Christ. So it's such a great responsibility that we have as a church. Amen. Jason, any final shots on this whole thing before we wind it up? Well, I would say, and this is to sort of take it, excuse me, in a little different direction, but I think here in the United States, Mala, there's sort of a secondary concern for a lot of pastors, and that is in watching the culture drift away from the biblical worldview and the government be right on the heels of it, the thought extends beyond just coronavirus and the response to coronavirus to is this a harbinger of things to come as the government finds strategies for ways to hamstring the church and slow the church and muzzle the church.

And it seems like it could be, and so that's sort of a secondary concern for me, but it's not very secondary. I think a lot of us are wondering, are things being learned here that are going to be employed as a way to silence the church? And pastors will just, again, that's not to make us afraid, that's just to make us understand the waters in which we find ourselves today and to be ready to lead our people to be a faithful church if that becomes the environment that we're in. Yeah, amen. Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

You know, we wanted to communicate a few things on this podcast. One is that we can debate this matter without hating one another. It's a worthy debate. We all come from different places, and our greatest responsibility is to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ and communicate the Word of God. So we just need to keep doing that.

At the same time we have to love one another. So okay well Mala thank you so much for joining us. Good to be here. Thanks, Scott. Yeah, yeah, let's do it again for sure.

So thank you for joining us at the Church and Family Life podcast and join us again next Monday where we hope to communicate the beauty of the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life. God bless you. Until we meet again. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up.

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