[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: My name is Jason and I'm one.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Last week we talked about contentment and the idea that oftentimes the digital life offers us access to everything and that doesn't necessarily yield contentment. Or said another way, that access to excess does not lend itself to holiness. We use the illustration of being at the buffet and you're not typically healthier in your choices or more discerning because you have access to all of these things. And we've said this multiple times, information is cheap in the digital age. Information is easily accessible and virtually unlimited. But infinite is not the same as eternal. And as we kind of closed last week, we moved in the direction of community and asking the question of what is community? So that's essentially where we're going to begin tonight.
I've referenced a book by the Fuller Youth Institute called Three Questions that Change Every Teenager. And those three questions are, who am I? Where do I belong? And why do I matter? We've talked a bit about identity over the last couple of months. Tonight we're going to move in the direction of community.
So before we get there, I want us to watch a video that aired several years ago by Facebook. And I think their intention, I think it had a different impact than what they intended. So just real quickly, let's watch that.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: This morning when I went to the supermarket, I finally found the pet aisle.
So I start walking down the pet aisle.
Cats, you know, they're seniors now. I got them when they were 2 and 3, but they're now 12 and 13. So another time I went to the market and I had to buy a chicken. I checked the date and it was like a month ahead. So I thought, okay, there was a long exchange.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Welcome to Facebook home. A whole new experience for your phone.
All right, first impressions of this ad.
What jumps out to you? What do you think the aim was of this advertisement at first I thought.
[00:03:07] Speaker D: It was going to be like, look at these things that are happening while they're looking down. They're not even noticing what's going on.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: But. But then.
[00:03:15] Speaker D: Yeah, like, that's what I thought the.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Point was gonna be. But what was the point?
[00:03:19] Speaker D: Well, the point was that, oh, all these things are happening because.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Just the opposite. Right. All right. Anything else? Jump out to somebody.
[00:03:27] Speaker E: I guess my first impression is, like, the way that they were making her tone sound. It was almost like they wanted, like she wanted to tune the person out. And so she was on her phone, like, trying to, like, escape the, like, weird family.
It was just like a weird anecdote about, like, the pet aisle.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:44] Speaker E: I imagine, you know, not interesting to her. Okay, I'm gonna tune out.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Which I don't know about, like, you guys, but she starts talking about purchasing the chicken, like, I'm all ears. I want to know where that story ends. Yeah. The whole point here is it seems a little convoluted almost because.
And this came out, I think it was 2013.
So a lot has changed over the last 12 years, for sure. But at that point, the whole. The whole idea was that you can escape to somewhere else. That's, quote, unquote, more interesting.
What was she looking at on her phone, presumably? Who was she looking at?
Friends. Yeah. People that she knew. People that were somewhere else other than where she was.
I want to go back to this chart that we looked at last week, just briefly.
And this represents the percentage of each generation who say growing up they felt lonely. And you'll notice that the numbers are kind of skewed. But the oldest, the silent generation, their loneliness growing up was minimal in comparison to Gen Z. Gen z started with 12%. 16% combined, 28% say that they felt lonely every day or a couple of times a week. In comparison, 9% of Silent Generation felt that way growing up. The silent generation, 41% said never, and 41 and 30 never do math, live in front of people. But 74% said that either seldom or never did they feel lonely growing up. Whereas in comparison, gen Z has 11 plus 17 plus 16. Right. So it's just kind of a flip flop. And then you see those middle generations that are incrementally moving in either direction there. It's an interesting stat to me. Takes a minute to wrap my brain around it. But essentially Gen Z feels much lonelier growing up than any of the other generations did, especially baby boomers and the silent generation. And we've talked a lot about These generational experiences, how at the core, their needs and desires are very similar, but the experience is packaged very, very differently, which leads to a different experience completely. Sherry Turkle, back in 2012, I believe it was, released a book called Alone Together.
She's a professor at mit, and she shifted her career into the field of studying technology and the effects of on society and on culture and on individuals. And one of her phrases that she's very, very well known for is that we are forever elsewhere.
That commercial really drives home this idea that we are forever elsewhere. You're in a meeting, and in that meeting, something's being presented on the screen, but you're scrolling, or you're checking email, you're watching a movie with your family, but you're also on your phone, scrolling. So you are forever in elsewhere, no matter where you are. You can also be all these other places.
Well, 15 to 20 years into this social media. Well, 20 to 30 years into this social media experiment, we realized that's not always a good thing. In fact, specifically for younger generations, that's a bad thing. And I'm presenting this as causation. It's not exactly causation. There's a ton of correlation. But Jonathan Haidt, among others, makes a real good case that there is a lot of causation that as well here, because the vast difference of childhood is the social media experience. So tonight, when we talk about this idea of community, this is kind of the backdrop for where we are living today. That we are. We have the capability of forever being elsewhere in the same room with 100 people, but emotionally, mentally, we're anywhere else. Right. Technologically, we can be connected elsewhere without just reading. I put the answer on there. What is your idea of community? How would you answer that question, what is community without using the word belonging? Because I already stole that one.
How do you define community?
What's that?
Family. Okay.
Togetherness.
What else? What's that? Common purpose.
Okay. Sharing.
Okay. What's a working definition of the word community?
Connection.
Okay. Community is connection.
I actually found it fairly difficult to answer because I think all of those are parts of it for sure.
What I kind of came to was just really mostly a synonym, not a synonym exactly, but it's a place of belonging. So it could be a family setting. Community could also be. When I was in college at Faulkner, I found community in a social club, but I also found community in other people that were sharing the same major that I shared. I found community in the whole school, especially when we went up against another school. Right. Like I was with my community, and we all had this. We were diametrically opposed to the other community, the other team. We find community on. Well, there's our next question. To what communities do you belong? Maybe that's an easier question to answer. Name some of the communities that you can identify in your life.
Church. Church. Okay. Like local. Specific. Local congregation. Okay.
Your colleagues. So at work. Work. Community. Yep. All right. And I guess colleagues would extend just beyond your specific location. Sometimes just in the field, perhaps, Sir.
No, no. What else?
That's okay. You can have that. Community. Yes. For those at home. He's referenced another school in Alabama.
Reference. Auburn. Yes. What else?
Hoa.
You're trying to bait me on that one. Do it. College organizations. College organizations or groups? Okay.
Campus group. What's that? Hobbies. Hobbies. Yes. People that have a, like, interest as you. And hobbies. Citizenship. Very good. Yep.
That's a community. Especially when the community. The place in which you live is not necessarily the place where you grew up. Yep. Around the same folks you grew up. That's really good. Yes, ma'. Am.
Health diagnoses. Okay.
Can you elaborate on that just a little bit?
Gotcha. Yeah. If you have cancer diagnosis. Yeah. Folks that can. Delaney just moved her head right in our line of sight. Oh, she did it again. Well played. Yeah, exactly. So if you've gone through something similar with someone else, specifically from a health standpoint. Yeah.
Your neighborhood. So outside of just your specific household, but also the other households in your neighborhood, there are a lot of communities that we kind of identify ourselves with that we associate with on a regular basis.
What is the opposite of community?
Isolation.
Anybody else?
Loneliness in 2023, then US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said that the United States is in the midst of a loneliness epidemic.
He would go on to issue the report on also the social media issues that contributed to that. But the loneliness epidemic wasn't exclusive to the young people in our country, although they were the hardest hit by that.
The opposite of community, I think would include both of those. Loneliness or feeling isolated.
Can you feel lonely in a room full of people?
Okay, so community is not simply being around other people.
It's not just physical. Right.
Community is a deeper level. To commune with someone is different than even just communicating with someone. And we'll get to that towards the end of class. That's where I want us to really think deeply about tonight, is even though we all come to class on a Wednesday night in the same location, the same room, oftentimes we can feel like there's a community here because we feel a part of that, but we're unaware of other people who may not feel that same level of community. There are different levels.
There's a different piece that comes from surface level. Community is a little bit more of, I guess, acquaintanceship, right? You have a lot of acquaintances. If you go to a big school, you've got a lot more acquaintances than you do deep friendships, right? Or relationships. Community involves that relationship. Oftentimes what starts that community and forms the context is maybe like a hobby, a mutual interest or a mutual experience, be that a diagnosis or an experience in life. Those that are in first medical, first responders, those that are in the military, those are in armed forces, that they have some mutual experiences. Those who went through the same pledge week have a mutual experience right through college. So we have all of these other experiences where that create a really good opportunity for relationships to be built.
You can be an alum from a school but not have a connection and be a part of that community.
So it also involves some information. You have to be informed about other people, about that other place.
So what makes the church different? Well, we're going through on Sundays a study of the church. So this fits in perfectly with what we're talking about tonight. There are truly hundreds of passages that we could turn to to go deeper on this idea of community. I want to look at just a few. In the very beginning of the church, in the life of the church, In Acts, chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, we read, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. All believers were together and had everything in common. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts. And then Acts 4:32 through 35, all the believers were in one heart and one mind. Were one in heart and mind. They shared everything they had. There were no needy persons among them. Just looking at these two excerpts identify with me. What are some of the. What are some of the elements or the ingredients of this first century community of believers?
Fellowship. What is fellowship?
Okay, being together, interaction, one way. I just, I feel like it's more than just kind of hanging out like spiritual fellowship. So to me it's spiritual togetherness, which is, I don't know, kind of a artsy term that also is just as vague. So. But I want us to get to some. Pull back, peel back some of those layers tonight to rightly identify what that really is in scripture. Keep going.
So fellowship, what else?
Unity. Unity in what?
Unity in mind and Spirit. Yep. What else? Involvement. Involvement. What?
[00:14:02] Speaker F: In every aspect of their lives, saying they shared everything they had.
So they're just deeply involved in every aspect of each other's lives.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Okay. Involved. Intimately involved in more than just that. Hey, how you doing?
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Participatory. Participatory. I like it. The more syllables the better. Love it.
Common purpose. And that was spreading the gospel and first being pricked by the gospel. Right. So they had a mutual experience. And to some degree, that mutual experience, at least for that very first group at Pentecost, was guilt and shame.
What have we done? What should we do? And that was kind of a mutual emotion there. Yes, sir.
Breaking of bread. Alright, so having. Sharing a meal together or. Meals together. Right. Why is that significant, do you think?
[00:14:48] Speaker G: I mean, if we're going to look on the first church, you know, they actually have been breaking bread, but have.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: A meeting and.
[00:14:58] Speaker G: Having meal together around the table, it's kind of bring people to the same level. Even though if you're tall, the chair we're going to make you.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: We don't have to talk about height, man. All right, sorry.
[00:15:10] Speaker G: But it's going to bring you on the same level and we're going to unite. And I know that, you know, King Arthur had, you know, instead of making, you know, a square table, you know, he had a round table. So nobody was going to be at.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: That core, the head of the table. Yeah, yeah. What's cool about the table, and I love that you bring this up, is that everybody's got to eat. Right? The most powerful man in the world and the lowliest. Right. The most, I don't know, imprisoned prisoner. They both have a basic need to eat. So the table is kind of a. It democratizes some of that. Right. It brings people together. There's also. When you have someone in your home, there's a level of intimacy that you're allowing with that person. I don't let just anybody in my home. Right.
I let people that I know or want to know better into my home and I definitely don't feed them unless there's some level of trust or interest there. Right. So there's a relationship. Again, this is more than just acquaintances. What else?
Yes, sir.
[00:16:05] Speaker H: I mean, yeah, I was going to say there's a level of vulnerability that we may not have as much today just because of the serious size of the church that we have.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a great. That's a great point. That there was a vulnerability that is clearly at stake here.
Anything else?
Yes, sir.
[00:16:27] Speaker D: Unselfish it said there were no needy persons among them. They cared about each other enough to, I guess, take note of each other's needs and then share what they had.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Exactly. So they had that information.
They were informed when someone needed. But then they also had that action and that relationship that led them to take care of that need. Were you gonna say something?
[00:16:45] Speaker I: I was gonna say something. They had confidence in each other, to rely on each other. That's what.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So reliance on one another is that.
[00:16:54] Speaker I: They can go to someone and say, hey, I'm having trouble with this. Can you help me pay for the X, Y or Z?
[00:16:59] Speaker B: No. It's a really hard thing sometimes to ask for help. Right. And they clearly ask for help, at least on the physical. And there's every reason to believe there was the spiritual there as well. Yes, sir.
If you go all the way back.
[00:17:11] Speaker J: To the beginning, you've got community. When God said, let us make man in our image.
And then you also see that God saw that it was not good. The man was alone.
So you've already got the start of community.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:30] Speaker J: And with that, that's what God had been moving toward all the time.
Man broke that down. But God already knew about that as well. But community is what God wants. He wants it with us. That's why Christ came, so that we might have community with God, community with one another.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: That's right. Unity is in the word community. Right. And it is the essence or one of. Not the essence. It's. Love is the essence of God, I guess. But, yes, God in his existence is Father, Son, Holy Spirit. There's three in one. So why would that also not be the essence of our relationship? We talked about that as well. When it comes to reconciliation. Because the goal of reconciliation is not to be right, but it's to be right with each other and to be right with God. Great. Yes, sir.
[00:18:22] Speaker J: When we see the two greatest commands, they're to love God with all of our being and then to love our fellow man as we love ourselves. And once again, both of those promote communion, right?
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Yep, absolutely. Acts 12, 5 we read. So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. Look in Acts 12 real quick with me. I love this. This is. I mean, I don't love that Peter was thrown in prison, necessarily, but, man, what a great series of events.
So Peter was kept in prison. This is verse 5 of chapter 12. But those in the church were earnestly praying to God for him on that very night before Herod was going to bring him out for trial. Peter was sleeping between two soldiers and bound with two chains, while guards in front of the door were keeping watch over the prison. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the prison cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke up, which I also love that, like, wake up.
I don't know if that's what it looked like, but that's what I imagine. Get up quickly. And the chains fell off Peter's wrist. The angel said to him, fasten your belt and put on your sandals. Peter did so. Then the angel said to him, put on your cloak and follow me. Peter went out and followed him. He did not realize what was happening through the angel, that what was happening through the angel was real, but thought that he was seeing a vision. After they passed the first and second guards, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them by itself. They went outside and they walked down one narrow street. When at once, the angel left him, when Peter came to himself, he said, now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from everything the Jewish people were expecting to happen. When Peter realized this, where did he go?
He went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many people had gathered together and were praying. I don't know if many of you remember this, but several years ago, one of our own, Zigfried Bill, was in Vietnam on a mission trip and going from village to village and going from church to church, strengthening the churches. And at one point, he was meeting in a hotel, and he was meeting with Brothers and Sisters in Christ in a hotel room. And one of the Christians came in there and said, get your stuff, we're leaving now. Just in the middle of a Bible study, Just completely abrupt. He grabbed his bag, they ran him down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the back of the hotel. They pushed him into a vehicle, a van, with four or five people he had never met. He did not speak their language, and off he went.
He pulls out his satellite phone, made a call to his wife, had no idea what was going to happen. They eventually, because he has German citizenship, were able to smuggle him into a different country a roundabout way and eventually get him out. But it was because law enforcement were on their way to arrest him and to throw him in jail because he was preaching in Vietnam. The things we read about here seem so far away from me. They seem like a completely different world, but the reality is they're just across the pond.
The idea of Community here in the United States, to me, there feels like there's an accessibility that's easy because we could walk into any church building, potentially have the, you know, have that potential of having a spiritual community. But in other countries there are higher stakes for that.
And so it's really easy to take the idea of community for granted, to not actually see the. To not, I guess, fully live out the value of that, to take it for granted on a regular basis. And especially in a place where we have hundreds of people that meet every single week, it's effortless to allow people to kind of fall through the cracks.
Oftentimes people come to a church building seeking that community and they don't find it. And so then they start searching other places. And in the digital age, there are a lot of nooks and crannies of the Internet that people can find some kind of community. And oftentimes it starts because of a hobby or it starts because of a political idea. It starts because of an interest here, an interest there. But oftentimes it also starts because of a deficit in places like this.
And the bigger we get, as we continue hopefully to grow, Lord willing, the more effort and energy we have to put in of not just coming here and being a consumer and getting what we need, walking into the supermarket and getting the produce that we need and then going home. This is not a supermarket. We just come and gather our things. This is a place where we come together and we also look for other people. It's a hospital, right? Remember last week we said hospitals are full of two different types of people, sick and injured people and those who want to help sick and injured people. And I think every week, that's our mentality when we gather on the first day of the week, in the middle of the week, and anytime we get together, wherever two or three or more are gathered, right? If God is in our midst, if Christ is in our midst, then we understand that fellowship is not just a hanging out, it's not just a casual acquaintance. But there's a spiritual purpose and potential there if we seek it out. If we look below the surface, if we go dig a little deeper, let's keep going to the Book of Acts. Chapter 16, 13, 15 is where Lydia opened her home after a baptism and immediately created a spiritual family, family space, a gathering for the people that were there. We read of others who opened their home throughout the Book of Acts for people to gather into worship there. Believers gathered late into the night. Remember Acts 20 for teaching worship fellowship. My main man, Eutychus got called out for snoring, fell out of the window, died, and then up from the grave, he rose. Right? So Eutychus became a centerpiece. That was probably a topic of conversation in the middle of the night. My assumption is after that, guy dies, comes back to life. Bring out the casseroles. Let's do it all again. It's 3am doesn't matter. We're going to eat. This is what the church did. In chapter 12, we also read. Well, we just read through chapter 12, right? So in chapter nine of Acts, when the brothers found out about this, they brought him down. This is Saul returning to Jerusalem. After Saul's conversion, he struggled to find that community among the believers because he was a terrible person to the Christians, Right? He was a great Jew, but a terrible Christian.
And his reputation preceded him. When the brothers found out about this, they brought him down to Caesarea, they sent him away to Tarsus. Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria experienced peace and thus was strengthened and living in the fear of the Lord and in the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, the church increased in numbers. The church grew.
The church grew out of someone who had done horrible things to the church, who was converted and now was doing great things. And now people like Barnabas have to speak up and risk their social credibility to give Paul the stamp of approval of fellowship.
Imagine being responsible for throwing people in prison and even killing people and then showing up to be like the summer series speaker. I don't know about that.
I think we would struggle to fellowship Paul because of his reputation.
And sometimes the things we've done in the past prevent community in the present.
A couple weeks ago, we talked specifically about sexual sin and how oftentimes that kind of sin follows you.
Even if things have been made right with God and even with other people.
Sometimes it's the third party. It's the rest. You know, in high school, when, like, a couple was splitting up, they split up. There's two friend groups, right? And you're team him or team her.
Well, him and her are actually okay. They're cool being friends now, but because team him and team her, they keep chatting. They make it much more difficult for him and her. They're fine, but team him and her, they're awful. And they won't let it go. It's not even their fight, it's not even their wound, right?
That's kind of what happens. That's another barrier to godly biblical community sometimes is when we don't allow repentance to take place. When we don't receive confession of sin. Well, when we don't look to move forward, we look to just hang on to the past.
These are all things that the early church had to struggle with. They had to reconcile, they had to come to grips with. And it's no different in the digital age.
Brian Chen, in his article in the New York Times, made this comment. Americans now spend more time alone, have fewer close relationships, and feel more socially detached from their communities than they did 20 years ago. We've referenced some of the research from Jean Twenge and how she said emerging generations are more connected online than anyone previous to them and less connected offline than any generation previous to them.
So this is a weird puzzle we're putting together here because we have more networking options and capabilities online, and it doesn't necessarily mean that we solve that loneliness factor.
Gen Z is known for being in the midst and the heart of that loneliness epidemic, and they've spent more time online than any generation previous. So there does seem to be some direct correlation here.
So what is the church's role in the midst of this? Let me ask you a few questions. When it comes to the first day of the week, gatherings, what is something that in person gatherings and online gatherings have in common? What can we do in person that we can also do online?
When it comes to the first day, when it comes to worship on Sunday, what are some of the things that we can do in both environments?
What's that? Pray. We can pray. Yep. You can pray online, you can pray in person. What else?
You can listen to a sermon. Yep. You can listen online, you can listen in person. What else?
You can give online. You're welcome. And you can give in person. That's right.
Not you specifically, but, you know, the masses. Yeah. 75% of our weekly contribution comes from online giving. And that's been the case now for the last three or four years since we've started offering that. So yeah, what else? What else? Singing, Singing. You can sing online. You can also sing in your house. It sounds different, but yeah, my house. It does. But yeah, you can sing online. You can sing in person. Yes, sir.
[00:28:00] Speaker H: I mean, you can chat with people.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:03] Speaker H: If you're watching online service, like during COVID see chats on the. Or comments on the Facebook feed.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Yep. And there are some churches that really encourage that where they have like a live chat going and someone's dedicated to just watching that and engaging with people. There's a lot of churches that will have like prayer request prompts and things like that. In the midst of their livestream. Yep.
What else?
You can also check your email at home or in person or nap.
That's right. But now that we got lumbar, it's much better to do that here. Might as well. What else? Is there anything else that you can do in both.
Both settings? You can do communion. Right. You can partake in communion. You can observe the Lord's supper. Yep.
You guys are missing the big one.
Hey. Fall Asleep by Eutychus. That's right. That's right. Pew to floor or couch to floor? Either one. That's right.
We're getting closer.
Announcements?
Nobody? Okay, good. We should just do away with them altogether. You can do just about everything. Right. What can you not do?
What can you not do?
Commune. What do you mean by commune?
Be with others. All right.
Shake somebody's hand. Give them a hug. Physical touch. Yep.
Okay. You can't always see who's there, who's not there. Yep. You can see that more at home sometimes when you watch when we go to the wide angle. But you definitely can't know who's not there when you're in the building. Yep.
You can't sit next to your friends and family. So proximity is a challenge. What else?
Can't meet new people. Okay.
It's harder to connect even if you.
[00:29:37] Speaker F: Can technically chat with them. Have you even noticed that even like on video chat versus being in person, Just something's different when you're together in person.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Okay. Something's different.
Chit chat. Yeah. To me, I rediscovered the value of chitchat during the pandemic because when it was over, you weren't in the hallways, you weren't in the lobby, you weren't out on the back lawn with the kids running around and catching up on things. That's right. There's a lot of value to those smaller micro interactions. Yes, sir.
[00:30:06] Speaker D: There's no kids give.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: There's no kids give. That's right. They have to give it to daddy.
Just kidding. It eventually found its way back. Yep.
There's no pause button when your kid acts up or screams in your ear, you miss something. Ah, there you go.
They just keep going. That's right. And you have to go a lot farther away for people not to hear it. Uh huh. No, I understand.
Yes, sir.
[00:30:29] Speaker D: For me, the singing does not have the same impact.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Okay. Singing doesn't have the same impact. Why is that?
[00:30:35] Speaker D: It feels a lot less substantial to me when I'm just singing, like at home, along with the online service.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: I know.
[00:30:43] Speaker D: It's the same Amazing melody in my heart. But for me personally, it doesn't, like, uplift me in the same way that it does when I'm with a group.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Why do you think that is?
[00:30:53] Speaker D: I like being surrounded by people that are doing the same thing as me.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: Okay, from a biblical perspective, what is some of the purpose, what are some of the purposes of us singing?
Think in Ephesians, Colossians, here, teach one another to admonish.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Right?
[00:31:07] Speaker B: There's. There's an other person element to that equation. And when that other person, those other people are not there in the room with you, then it feels a little less fulfilling. Right?
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: That's great. Can you baptize online?
Let's have fun. I threw this out to my students. Class I teach for Faulkner. Quick show of hands. If you believe that if there is a VR baptism, that counts, like on virtual reality, you put your headsets on. I know, I know, man, it's crazy. But you put your headset on and you're in the metaverse and you meet your friend there and they want to be baptized. And so you say, hey, look, there's a cow. We moved the cow out of the pond. Now there's a pond here. Let's go down into the water. And someone is baptized there and they come up out of the water and you embrace you in your living room. They're in theirs. Alright, if you think that that is not okay, raise your hand.
Alright. Hands down. If you're a little bit unsure, raise your hand.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Okay. All right. I like this one too. Like.
Yeah, all right. If you think it's fine, raise your hand.
Nobody's brave.
Amen. There you go.
All right. I've thrown this out to my students because they're much younger than me and they're going to have to deal with more of these questions because I do think at least some kind of augmented reality is going to become more normalized. It's already becoming more normalized because Ray Ban's on board, so it's more fashionable. That's one big step, right? As long as it doesn't look like ski goggles, more people will wear them. And if it do like ski goggles, some people will still wear them and walk around New York City.
But is it the same? No, there's limits.
Scripture doesn't talk explicitly about living in the virtual realm because there was no virtual reality around in the first century, obviously.
But biblical truth has to exist and has to be just as relevant in the age in which we live. The age in which we live. There are more virtual experiences offered.
So we have to think, and I know it sounds silly and ridiculous, but we have to think biblically and then have to explain and articulate biblically, especially for the next generation to understand how to think about these things.
There are limits. That's why it's called artificial intelligence. That's why it's called virtual reality. It's not true intelligence. It's not true reality.
We live according to the reality of Christ.
That is our lens for seeing the world, for understanding how things work, and for coming to the conclusions that we come to. They are filtered through this. They are filtered through spiritual fellowship, through the gospel, through communion with God.
So I think it sounds silly, but I think it's important to think about.
Because during the pandemic in my living room, we turned the volume up really loud when the singing came on. And it did feel like a little bit more of an immersive experience. It kind of felt like you closed your eyes, it kind of felt like you were there. And I wouldn't have been totally opposed to putting a headset on and seeing that room now in three dimensional experience, looking around and looking over here and seeing some virtual embodiment of Matthew House. Hey, Matthew, how's it going, man? Like, like that would have been one more step of immersive experience.
Again, still stop short of the real thing.
But Paul wrote letters because he couldn't be in two places at once, right? He used papyrus, not the font, but the actual, like the stuff, the parchment. And he sent letters. We still do that. You go back to World War I and World War II and there's books that are compiled of letters that soldiers sent home that long to be with other people other than the people they're with. But they're also intimately intertwined with that community as well because they're in bunkers together.
So now we feel like this idea that we can be in two places at once because we can FaceTime or we put on a headset and it feels like it's only going to get more realistic. The more computing power we have, the more data, the more all of that that we have, it's just going to get a little closer to reality.
So there is a spiritual component here that I think we need to think about. Let's go to the rest of the week. Fellowship. What can we do in person that we can't do or that we can do online?
I think I put these backwards. What do in person and online gatherings not have in common? What's something that you can do Online, but you can't do in person.
What do you think? Yes, sir.
[00:35:15] Speaker E: There's some benefits to like online Bible studies.
[00:35:18] Speaker D: Just convenience, time management.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Okay.
Yeah. You can have access to a lot of different commentaries and Bible study resources that if you're not in a library, you don't have access to. What else?
Oh, gotcha.
Okay. You can interact with people that you're not in the same room with that otherwise you wouldn't be able to interact with. I guess what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. Excellent, excellent. What else?
Can't split a pizza for lunch. And if you can't do that, then my food pyramid crumbles. So there you go. That's right. You can't split a pizza there. Often times if you're online, like that time limit, you start to kind of feel that. Right. Because there's also these other things that distract you. That's really good. What else?
[00:35:58] Speaker E: I think that like the ability to respond to like crisis relatively quickly. I mean is back in the day you didn't have a way to like phone somebody and be like, hey, this like really tragic thing just happened in my life. I mean, you're trying to facilitate an in person reaction at the end of that. Right. But just the ability to quickly communicate with one another when something like tragic does happen.
[00:36:20] Speaker B: The technology eventually becomes a barrier, I think is what you're saying, to some degree. Right. Like there's a. It's going to show its limitations usually pretty quickly. And I think most of us saw that during the time when we couldn't be in the same place. What are some of the things that we can do on both platforms in person and online?
Gossip. That's right. You do that anywhere and anytime with any device. Yep.
[00:36:41] Speaker G: But you can do more online because.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: You can attach photos or videos. Yeah. And it spreads quicker. Right. What have we said all quarter long? Technology does what to our hearts?
It amplifies what's in our hearts.
And so things that we come across. And this is one that's not even like a young person struggle. This is more of an old person struggle where you see something that you. Oh, that's horrible. I'm gonna share that. Well, it's horrible, but it's also not real at all. You know, like there's a watermark right there.
That happens a lot. I see that all the time. And very politely. Hey, just want to let you know that's not a real thing. Oh, but it's an awful story. Like. Right. But not a real story. So not awful. Awful to share. Maybe but not right. Like, that's a lesson that all ages have to learn, how to rightly identify truth. And technology in particular amplifies that, especially the untruth. And truth gets buried real quick.
I shared a story a few weeks ago of some friends of ours who had their license, or, excuse me, their location shared, blasted all over the Internet because someone stole their trash and went to the reserve and preserve and they tore all the trash at me. So they got accused of taking the trash to Decatur and just leaving it there. Like, come on now, two different locations. Well, the guy that posted that was all about, hey, we need to get these folks, let's, you know, show up and dump our trash, blah, blah, blah. Well, when he got called out, like, hey, that's wrong, like, someone stole their trash, his, like, he took down the post, but his, like, apology post wasn't an apology.
That was mistaken identity, and that was it.
We're looking at like 70, 80 shares versus like 2 likes from the 2 people who, you know, who he slandered. Basically, like, it scales up, but not, not at the same rate as in person. And I know the telephone game. We can still, we can start some controversy in person, but the way the Internet works, it scales up at a rate that we cannot control. And then to get the truth back is like whack a mole. You'll never get them all. It's just relentless. Just relentless.
J. Kim, in his book Analog Church, wrote, digital communities are convenient and customizable. They're based on preferences and designed to be easily and quickly chosen or unchosen. But analog communities are different. When we show up in the flesh, it's not as easy to unfriend, unfollow, or block. Analog communities are based on preferences, not preferences, but on presence.
In reality, it's actually really hard to. To disfellowship somebody. I think it's supposed to be, because that's not the hope. The hope is reconciliation.
But Scripture talks about the idea of disfellowship, of putting space. Because putting space between you and another person is supposed to be uncomfortable. It's supposed to hurt. It's supposed to want to bring them back.
But online, it's real easy to real quiet, unfollow, mute.
We unfellowship one another all the time. And these, like, microaggressions and all that, you know, there's a bunch of different terms for it. But online, it's really easy to do that with the click of a button. Yes, sir.
[00:39:45] Speaker G: You become more dull because you cannot sharpen One another face to face.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Iron sharpens iron. All right. As we close, just a couple of things to look at. There is, as we mentioned before, there's a difference in communicating. Again, that's information exchange. This could be an email communing.
We don't generally commune in our meetings. Probably ours are a little different here at the church because they are spiritual in tone. And some of that information that we talk about from a scheduling standpoint could be an email.
But when you open and close with a prayer, I don't take that for granted. I know that that's not common in your workplace. I'm thankful that it is common in my workplace.
Right.
Communicating is primarily about the exchange of information, but. But communing is primarily about the exchange of presence.
There is benefit to online communities. There are people that struggle to fit in socially. Some of us are very weird. Right. Some of us are very odd. Some of us struggle. They're more introverted than others. And it is difficult. I'm not trying to say this is easy. I'm saying it's necessary to be the church. We need to be a place where weird people can still find connection.
And it means that we make an effort.
It means that we see each other and we hear each other. We make a place for each other.
This is the last thought to close on here. The church needs to look different than your local CrossFit.
Right. It needs to look different than from your office, from the ballpark, from whatever chat room, the online group. There's something different here, and it's the resurrection of Jesus. Right.
There's a spiritual fellowship, and this is something we have to work at. Especially as Madison Church of Christ gets bigger and bigger, it's a lot easier for people to kind of drift back into the shadows. You can do that at any church. But the bigger you are, the easier it is to just kind of be incognito. I don't want anybody incognito. You don't have to be friends with 3,000 people, but you got to have some depth to that relationship so that you can. Iron sharpens iron so that you can lift each other up. Two things, I think essential in every congregation, accountability and encouragement. And if you don't know people, accountability only comes across as judgment and harsh judgment. But when there's a relationship there, it's mentoring, it's discipling. It's iron sharpening iron. Right?
And the last thing is, in the age of artificial and virtual, nothing stands in contrast more than authentic and genuine. The church, by default should be this city set upon a hill in a landscape that is digital, that is ambiguous, that can be anonymous.
We stand up and we stand up with the identity of Christ.
We offer a community here. We work at that. We do hard things, even having difficult conversations. We confess sin, we repent of sin, and we accept people who have confessed and repented of sin. And we hold each other accountable and we lift each other up. That's what the church does. And it's beautiful and it's by God's design. Let's bow in prayer and we'll be dismissed. God, we love you. And we thank you so much for allowing us to share in this community of believers here at Madison, to be a part of the greater church community across the world, to be a part of the Bride of Christ, Father, to be a part of your kingdom, your church. We thank you so very much for sending Christ to die for our sins, to make a way and a path for us to be reconciled through him to you. We thank you for your spirit who comforts us and who leads us into all understanding of your truth. I pray that our thoughts would be shaped by the gospel and that our lens for seeing this life would be exclusively the gospel of Jesus. We thank you so much for allowing us to be here tonight. Help us to take these things, to apply them, and to seek out opportunities to grow your community of believers. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Love you guys very much. Have a great week.
