EP30: Why Faithfully Gathered?

Verse 25 of Hebrews, Chapter 10 Let us not neglect meaning that

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

we are going to make a choice as we do life together.

We're going to commit to actually be together in time and

space, Not through our phones, not infrequently, but

frequently. We're going to do that.

The average of Christian American goes to church one to

two times a month. Let me just say it we don't want

to be average. Welcome back to the Grace Church

Podcast 2024 Edition. My name is Scott Mazingo.

I'm your host today, and our goal here is to equip,

encourage, and inspire you in your devotion to God and others.

Today we have Tanner Corley and Blake Payne with us.

Hello friends, how are we? Pretty good.

How about you? We're doing good.

Good, good. Hey, why don't you guys

introduce yourselves? Tell us a little bit about what

you do here at the church and maybe a little bit about your

family. Yeah, I'm Tanner.

I lead worship over at the Powdersville campus and I'm the

video director, my wife and three kids.

We've been here for almost eight years.

And new addition just had a third child.

Yep #3. Congratulations.

Thanks for making time out of your busy schedule to be with

here. Be with us here.

Blake. What about you?

My name is Blake. I lost my voice this week, so

I'm going to sound amazing this whole time.

So it's probably not the podcast cutting out.

It's probably just my voice. Yeah.

But I work here at Pelham and I've been on staff for about 8

years and I also have three kids.

We have three daughters, as many of you know, that's what.

Girl dad. Girl dad.

That's what we do. One thing is certain, we met

girls. Well, I I'm really excited for

this conversation. Our topic, I didn't mention that

earlier, but we are discussing faithfully gathered which is a a

reworking of a core value. You would have heard this from

the stage recently in a vision piece.

And so we want to just tell you a little bit more about how that

language came to be. And yeah, just kind of catch you

up on some some thoughts and further some thoughts on that.

So Tanner, why don't you take the lead and just tell us a

little bit about how we got here?

Yeah, so about a year ago, there's a group of us that were

going through a class, Blake, Blake included.

And we were tasked with a ministry project kind of look

around at the church and see where we could put some energy

and maybe some time and and so this is not necessarily a new

idea but something that's kind of been in the works for a long

time. But just the kind of got started

thinking about worship, how does worship intersect with our core

values is it is, it is value for us but it's not really talked

about in foundations. And so it kind of got started

there and Scott, me and you, we talked about it a little bit

early, early on and just trying to see how how that kind of was

going to intersect our core values.

So you're, you guys are in a kind of a pastoral leadership

kind of a training class to cover in a lot of different

topics. And one of those is to look at

an area of our church that you feel like needs to be addressed

or some additional work done or just just some thoughts,

something that you care about. And so with your background in

worship, you're like, OK, where does this fit?

How do we communicate this is a value?

Is that kind of Fair to say? And then where did that journey,

Where did that take you? Where did it lead you?

Yeah, a lot of a lot of conversations.

With a lot of different. People just trying to ask that

question of how to how do you think that worship intersects

our core values and so as we kind of look back over the past

couple years COVID was a a big part of kind of helping kick

start what what all this was and.

What was, what was that? Yeah.

So I know we're tired of talking about it, but what I mean, it

has been four years since it started, but it really was a

really was a big changer for for a lot of things And so church

included. And So what were we seeing

coming back a couple years ago coming out of COVID that was

informing the way you were thinking about what our

gatherings look like? We were starting to see that the

value of gathering started to decrease and as the role of

technology started to increase and how that we were, we were

good to use that technology to consume on our own terms, to get

sermons and quote UN quote, be be gathered together, be a part

of something without actually being in space with people.

Couple things that we noticed coming out of COVID were that we

had spent a bunch of money on tents in order to have services

outside and have a safe, safe service.

And then we also had an online service.

And we felt that as we started to come back that it was

actually deterring some people and they were good to have

service on their own terms and be at home and not come back and

be in service with other believers.

And then one other thing is all across the upstate, almost every

Sunday, we have groups of people going into assisted living

communities and bringing services there.

And so you start putting all those things together.

And we started to realize that this idea of faithfully

gathering is way more than just what what is happening on a

Sunday morning. And so we we saw that we

actually lacked some language around it.

This is already a core value for us.

This is always already something that we're valuing.

And so it just lacks some clarity.

And so that was what part of why we started working on all this.

So as you begin to connect the dots, how did some of this

language start to form Tanner? The initial idea that I brought

to the leadership team was to add a core value, add faithfully

gathered to the six core values that we already had, right?

And as I was kind of explaining it, Scofield piped in.

And he said he's like, how does that intersect with relationally

connected? And so that kind of that

conversation started happening and we we started to think about

how that might play into even even meeting in smaller groups

not just meeting together on a Sunday or Saturday night service

But but how does that this value actually encapsulate some of

what relationally connected was was to was talking about.

Yeah, 'cause I think Bill made the statement that the, you

know, the Bible doesn't really differentiate between large

gatherings, medium sized gatherings, small gatherings.

It's talking about the the gathering of God's people.

And yeah, the relationally connected language I was a part

of helping shape some of that. And it has been 20 years, so

I'll speak as the only person that wasn't in middle school in

the room 20 years ago. You.

Could just say old. No, no, I'm just trying to help.

You out the language would save some time.

No, no. So but it's interesting that the

same idea that we were, we just talked about the expression of

individualism. The version of that 20 years ago

was I don't need other people. It's just me and Jesus, me and

God and my quiet time and my Bible and my prior life.

That's all I need. And if I can get in a good

church where there's some good teaching and that is all I need

to really grow spiritually. And so we had to help people

think, no God put relationships together.

God brought together the community of faith for a reason.

And God has always worked with a with a corporate aspect.

You know, God called a people together when he called Abraham

to form a nation. When we get to the New

Testament, God's talking to churches, we just read those

primarily letters individually, and that's that's our fault.

That's our misreading that God has always spoke to groups of

people and that the Spirit has a full fuller expression when you

have all these different gifted individuals that come together

and they gather together. And so we were working really

hard to reclaim that 20 years ago that you know, community

wasn't just icing on the cake, that it was a big part of the

cake, it was a big part of how we experience God.

And so Fast forward doesn't seem to be such a a a a new idea

anymore. In fact that idea of being

connected, maybe we're over connected now in some ways less

helpful, but you know we have these types of digital

connections and all types of relationships and friendships.

And so it just felt like that language maybe had run, run its

course a little bit. And I think that's where we got

to let's take the faithfully gathered and let's do a little

bit of replacement language with relationally connected.

Yeah, 'cause it's almost assumed that you would be relationally

connected at a church. Exactly.

It is. It is.

That's what a lot. That's what drives a lot of

people, honestly, to church. I mean, they might enjoy the

singing, which we have great singing.

They might enjoy the teaching. But a lot of folks are in need

or they notice the need that they have for relationships.

So they come to the church looking for those relationships,

and we're defining what kind of relationships those need to be.

Not just friendships, but spiritual friendships.

But yes, to your point, it's all under this banner of what does

it mean to come and be faithfully gathered?

Yeah, I I get a chance to work with a lot of our new folks that

are coming in and it's fascinating.

I mean just the last discovery we did this last month, we

probably had fifty, I think we had 51 people and it's

interesting 71%, about 70 to 71% of the folks in there were from

out of state, not even from not just not from Greenville, but

not even from South Carolina. So that's interesting.

The other thing that's interesting is most everybody

that comes in here, the first thing that they say like the

initial desire, which I think this is a good desire, but it

is, hey, I want to be connected, want community.

And so it's funny like and then they say we want to be in Group

and I'm like, well, how do y'all even know we have groups?

Like it's just to your point, it's just this, this assumption

that this is what y'all do and I'm sure y'all have groups and

that's what I want to do. And obviously we believe in

people knowing each other, doing life together.

But the other thing I would add too about the reworking updating

of the language is that we also, we also had some people that

would have told you they were relationally connected, right?

But we're actually missing some components of God's view on

gathering and actually what it really means to be connected,

right. And whether that meant reducing

relationally connected to friendships or relationships

that produce certain outcomes, whether that was networking or

business or I go to church with people that I work with,

whatever that meant. We also thought that people that

had that language in there, we're still missing something.

Sure, that's right. So let's spend a little bit of

time just talking about that. Like when we say faithfully

gathered, what do we mean? Yeah, it's a good question.

You know, when I think about that from a biblical

perspective, before I even jump into my own thoughts trying to

let the Scriptures really speak to this, I think about Hebrews

10 and it says, let us hold tightly without wavering to the

hope we affirm. For God can be trusted to keep

his promise was the first half. And then right after that it

says, let us think of ways to motivate one another, two acts

of love and good works. And let us not neglect our

meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another,

especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

And so when I think about it from a biblical perspective, it

seems like the authors of the Scriptures that you said

earlier, as they're writing to these local churches have to

continually remind people, hey, don't neglect, hey, don't

neglect, whatever you're doing, don't neglect.

Which is interesting. It means that even back then.

So COVID highlighted it for us. Right.

But it didn't create the problem.

The problem has been around for a long time, and even in this

church, whoever this writer of Hebrews is speaking to, he's

saying don't forget, don't neglect, which teaches me this.

It teaches me that even back then they would have had

reasons, whether legitimate or illegitimate, that were causing

them to not be together. And apparently that's not

working. Yeah, spirituality on my terms

seems to be a condition that humanity has always struggled

with. Right.

Jesus has a lot of thoughts for that.

Yeah, yeah. And and so when you put a group

of people together, it would it would make sense that that would

have to be something that that would be reminded.

Of That's right. So when I think about faithfully

gathering, I think I start actually with seemingly a human

condition that naturally we wander away, right?

Naturally we are people that are going to get distracted, that

are going to get swept up into multiple reasons, multiple

things that give us reasons to not be together.

And I think you have, you have two sides of a spectrum, like on

one side of a spectrum like we have a lot of people in our

church that are going through difficult times, that are

suffering. And I mean, we all know this

about suffering, like suffering can produce 2 results.

It can produce an unbelievable faith and hope and trust, or it

can create doubt and fear and can push you away.

And so I don't know if this would, if that's what would have

been happening for them, probably more so that's true for

them. They would have been dealing

with difficult things. He's trying to tell them to hang

on, keep your hope, right. Even though you're suffering,

like we got to still be faithful.

So suffering's one side, I think it's one thing that pushes

people away from gathering. The other end is success.

So we got a lot of successful people, and with success comes

opportunity comes, weekend events comes, you name it.

And all of those things that success brings to our life.

Good things, right? God wants them to have gifts

often times from Him, but they're things that can create

distraction and distance from us, from being with God's

people. And if it was a problem for

these folks and if it didn't work for these folks, I think

it's it's not going to work for us either.

We, whether you're in the middle of a trial or whether you're in

the middle of the, you know, the most successful season of your

life, like we have to make sure that we are orienting ourselves,

coming back to the middle and calibrating ourselves around

other believers. And so when I think about

faithfully gathering, I think about a value that helps us

prioritize something that would be a natural temptation.

Yeah, that's a really, really good framework.

And we always want to make sure that we use the word orientation

when we talk about being biblically oriented.

We want to conform our lives to the scriptures.

And so Tanner, what are a couple of other verses as you put

together this language that that informed so the so the folks can

go and even do some study on their own?

Yeah, I mean you go to Acts 2 and verse 42, it says.

And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the

fellowship and the breaking of bread and the prayers.

And then later on in Colossians, he says, let the message about

Christ in all its richness fill their lives, teach and counsel

each other with all wisdom that he gives, sing psalms and hymns

and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.

And whatever you do, do it as a representative of the Lord

Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.

And so you gotta think in Colossians, I mean, they're not

singing alone. And he's, he's talking, like you

said, talking to a group of people and he's, he's

encouraging them, hey, get together and counsel one

another, encourage one another. Give wisdom, sing together.

And it's just another. I mean later also it talks about

being baptized, Communion and Corinthians.

I mean just these also these sacraments that we have, they're

done in the context of the body. And so these are all biblical

grounds for eating together, being together.

I love it. Love it.

So it does beg the question, though faithful is a loaded

word. It's one of the biggest problems

with language is when you assume you mean the same thing, right?

So what we mean when we say faithful, let me give you 2

layers of it that I think can kind of help encompass the full

kind of the full framework of how we're thinking about it.

One layer would be committed and that word's pretty

self-explanatory, right? Just verse 25 of Hebrews,

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Chapter 10, let us not neglect meaning that we are going to

make a choice as we do life together.

We're going to commit to actually be together in time and

space, not through our phones, not infrequently, but

frequently. We're going to do that.

The average of Christian American goes to church one to

two times a month. Let me just say it We don't want

to be average as a church. We want to.

We have bigger sites than that. We have bigger vision than that.

So we would not consider that to be committed.

No, once, no, we would not say that is being committed.

We would say that that is frequent at best.

Yeah. And probably not enough for you

to experience the blessings of this cause.

Here's what I would say. You might hear faithfully

gathered and think, man, they expect a lot, and we do.

But the reason we expect a lot is because, like, God uses this

and brings blessing in our life. We don't care about our numbers.

We're not trying to check boxes. We're not trying to track you as

you walk in. Like we're trying to say, like

what does it take for you to experience the benefit of being

in God's Kingdom and faithful means being committed, which

means probably more than once a month, right?

Yeah, it means you're putting a value on it.

It means that you're backing that value up with your time.

You know, I think about families.

I think about sports. You know, if you have a child

playing a sport and they went to one out of every four practices,

2 out of every four practices, 1 they'd be missing out on a lot

and and two, they probably wouldn't be growing very much in

this skill in the sport that you have designated as important for

them. Now I coached the AU basketball

like five years ago. My team, they didn't miss any

practice. It was fascinating.

I had a kid drive 2 hours every night, every every time we

practiced. He never missed.

To be a part of a team. That's right.

And when we're talking about a faithful and gathering of church

folks, I mean, what more, how much more important is it to be

spiritually minded with brothers and sisters in Christ doing life

together, being conformed to the image of Christ, which is not

easy. And and seeing the need that we

have for each other, seeing this kind of Kingdom and eternal

purpose. I mean, that's not just church

talk, folks. I mean, that is really what

we're trying to do as we devote ourselves to Christ into one

another and and we're just calling out what's obvious is

that we need each other. Right.

And our average church service is an hour and 20 minutes.

If you just strip it all back, just the notion that I can give

3 hours a month to my church experience and it'd be

beneficial, it's just not a great notion to start with, you

know. And I mean, I even think on a

relational level, like I heard this a long time ago, I think

Matt said it just there's no such thing as quality time.

You can't ensure that the time you set aside for that date

night to trapdoor to get that. Well, if you got a trapdoor,

it's almost guaranteed quality time.

But like, you know, I mean, who knows what's going on?

The date night might have taken everything you had just to get

out of the door and you got in a fight right before you left.

So it's going to take an hour and a half just to get back on

each other's good side, you know?

And then the date's over because you can't pay for childcare

anymore. So the idea of quality time is

just it's a little bit of a facade.

It's a misnomer. What you can ensure though, is

that the more accurate way to ensure relationship quality is

just quantity time over time. When you do it and do it again,

one of the dates is going to work.

Yeah, we need reps. We need reps and I think the way

that we treat people and relationships in the church like

you never know the Sunday that God has something for you that's

going to that's going to move the needle.

You never know when the Spirit's going to show up or you're you

never know the the the time you're going to walk into the

lobby and meet the person that just moved here from Atlanta

with a special needs daughter and guess what you have a

special needs daughter and that's going to start a

relationship that leads to 1020 years of doing life together.

Here's I mean you just never know when that's going to

happen. And so I think that's where us

being committed, it just gives everybody and this whole thing,

this whole experiment a better chance to really catch momentum

and then it creates space for God to show up.

So that would be layer one committed, the second layer of

faithful would be engaged. And so verse 24 let us think of

ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.

So we don't want to just assume we just we just said a whole lot

about committed. But here's the slight nuance

that I think is worth saying. We don't just want to assume

that by you coming that it all that we just said is going to

happen. It's got to be more than just

being here and being faithful. Being and being committed is no

doubt half of the equation, but this idea of engagement is the

other half. And we're not making this up

like the New Testament is just littered with the House of what

it means to be together, of what it looks like to engage.

It doesn't just say show up, right.

There's fifty, there's 59 one another's in the Bible, and the

phrase occurs about 100 times in the New Testament.

Say that one more time, how many are?

59 One another's meaning. There are 59 different commands

of ways that we need to actually engage each other, and that idea

of one another comes up about 100 times in the New Testament.

So God doesn't just care about us gathering.

He cares about how we gather. Yeah.

So let me give you a couple this.

I think that'll help frame this out.

When we, when we say faithful, here's what we mean.

We mean that we are, we're committing.

And when we are, when we're here, we're confessing sin to

each other, we're praying for each other, we're serving one

another, we're loving one another, We're bearing each

other's burdens. And I mean, there's a ton more.

Let me just pick on that last one for a second.

Like if you were committed, but you're not bearing anybody's

burdens, then I would say you're missing out.

And the same is true if you're committed and you're coming, but

you've not really opened up your life in any way for somebody to

bear your burdens and your shoulders are heavier than they

need to be. And so being faithful is about

far more than just coming. It's about doing life with God's

people while we follow Jesus together.

And I think that idea of being committed and engaged if we can

if we can strive for that, I think it will unlock a new

version of church which is why I think the language is great good

work Tanner And if you're wondering man that sounds like a

productive ministry project. All the other ministry projects,

they all failed in comparison to Tanners because he.

He took. Over a core value.

So I'm not even going to tell you about mine because it was,

you know, it was humiliating, but good for him.

But that language, like that, faithfully gathering it, will

unlock for us new potentials. Well, and I love what you're

talking about because you're you're you're talking about

raising the level of expectation and anticipation of what God

wants to do when his people come together.

And I think we just have really really low kind of individual,

consumeristic standards and we have to be able to match God's

desires with our own desires. So that means we have to take on

the mind of Christ, see other people the way he sees them as

image bearers. We have to be willing to see our

need that that can be met by other folks and we have to be

able to give and receive. And for a lot of us, it's a lot

easier to give than it is to receive.

However, a lot of times we're giving on our own terms and

we're not really giving in abundance.

And that's because I don't think we're really good at receiving.

And if we were better at receiving, then I think we would

be more likely to give in in abundance and not just give a

percentage that we feel good to give.

And I'm not talking financially at all.

I'm talking about our time. I'm talking about our influence.

I'm talking about our expertise. I'm talking about just sitting

with people that that just need love and care.

I'm talking about having your schedule disrupted.

And so all of that is, is part of what it means to, I think, to

be faithful and to to have the same expectations for our

gatherings that that God has when we gather.

No doubt. No doubt.

Yeah. And the other piece is that.

But I think you have to think about that.

I was talking about worship earlier.

I think in my experience, responding to what God has for

you is always incremental. And I think that's one of the

pitfalls of, I don't know, let's just say modern American

churches that we can come and create this unbelievable

experience where my whole life gets uprooted and I'm on fire

for Jesus. And you know, I just, I do

services all the time. They just don't normally work

that way. Maybe for one person out there

or two people out there. But usually what happens is we

start a series in the book of James, and by the end of the

series I got two things that God's not letting me let go of.

And so it's just, it's slow, it's incremental.

And that's where I think the faithfully gathering piece is so

important is because it's just going to be hard to hear if

we're not here. And it's going to be hard to

move if we're trying to go at at a super expedited pace because

movement just doesn't normally happen like that.

It's slower and it's more incremental.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's why it's important that the New

Testament calls us to to baptism and communion there.

Those think both of those things are done within a community of

people. They're done with one another.

And you're witnessing A baptism. That's what it is.

It's a public confession. Going, dying, coming back up, I

mean, and then communion, getting around the table with

other believers. It's a meal together,

fellowship. It's all of that.

And so those are those both of those things that God has given

us are to be done together with one another.

To your point, like. Yeah.

So when we when we're eating a meal, we're not eating alone,

reading with a spiritual family. When we are being baptized,

we're not exclaiming our individual relationship with

God. We're also being baptized into a

community of faith. That's why it's public.

That's why it was a public witness.

Yeah. No, I think this is great,

'cause you're seeing hopefully all these pieces come together

of it's it's things that we're already doing, but we're trying

to put some language that what's the importance of language?

One is it it gives you confidence.

It it gives, it gives an explanation, but it really gives

you confidence. And then when you see it

happening on a week after week basis, you're like, yes, that is

what we are striving to do. Striving to be is a faithfully

gathered group of folks. Yeah, when I think about this is

not my definition. I stole it a couple years ago.

Just the idea of culture. Who are we?

And the definition for culture was people like us do things

like this. And I would.

I want us to be a church where we could say people like us

faithfully gather. Yeah, yeah, that's great.

Anything else guys, as we seek to close this?

Yeah, I would just say, you know one thing about this idea of us

even reworking, updating core value.

I mean, we're just trying to be faithful to Jesus and whatever

that takes from now and to eternity.

Like, as long as Grace Church exists, I am excited to be a

part of a place where we are willing to key in on the right

things, make the appropriate changes so that we can call

ourselves to the right things. You know?

And one day we'll be old like you, Scott, and we'll probably

come back and change faithfully gathered in 15 years because

it'll need to be changed. But until then, it's just that

it really represents the fact that we're trying to pay

attention and we're trying to follow God right now, and we're

trying to fight against the temptations that we have right

now so that we can be faithful right now.

And then we'll just trust God to to take that and bless us and do

with it what he wants. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

Well, thanks guys. Enjoyed this discussion.

Hopefully you guys see a little bit of how decisions are made

and how language is formed. And really it's it's the desire

to all of our core values are really built around the idea of

what is faithful expression of following Jesus.

What does that look like? And so we are firmly saying that

you can't follow Jesus well unless you're committed to

faithfully gathering. And so hopefully that'll be an

encouragement to you as we look at our own schedules, as we look

at our own priorities, as we look at our own lives and maybe

we all be better at doing that this year.

So thanks, gentlemen. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Good work, Tanner.