Crash Course: The Church

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Crash Course.

I'm here with my good friend Ben Sykes.

Hello.

That is Ben Sykes, right there.

I've known Ben for well, how long have I known you, Ben?

How long have I really known you?

That would be I came like maybe a year, year and a half into his hands, but we didn't necessarily cross circles too much.

Like you probably saw me on stage and said a few words, but we probably didn't get to know each other like go out to lunch kind of stuff until I did a little bit of stuff with Middle High a few years ago.

That's right.

So it's so Ben is uh Ben is someone who has worn I mean, you've worn a lot of hats over the years at his hands.

Number one, you've been on our worship team for a decade.

Uh you play keyboard, you sing, you've you've taught in the big room, you've taught done several messages, uh, you've written curriculum for Bible studies that we've done.

Um you've taught our junior high.

I think I I remember we had this, our high school group met on Wednesdays, and our junior high meets on Sunday mornings, but then there was this period where we had some overlap and we needed some junior high stuff on Wednesday nights as well.

Yeah.

Uh because we had adult stuff going on on Wednesday nights, and I asked you to do it, and it was funny because we we basically put you in this really small room or collection of rooms, and and every week it just grew.

And you were having like 35, 45 junior high kids in the smallest.

It was fun.

It's a little wild, but it was fun.

It was fun.

I remember that fondly, actually.

And uh in fact, I think one of the one of the s things you did with the junior high, we ended up having you we did as a whole church, that whole trees.

Yeah, the whole Jesus thing.

Yeah.

The whole Jesus thing.

We're like, hey, we you know what?

Ben's on to something here.

We should start talking about that Jesus guy on the city.

Jesus all the way through the Bible.

I should I should have clarified.

It was really good.

So I'm really happy to have Ben on, and you'll you'll hear his voice uh fairly often.

He'll be one of the regulars on Crash Course, so I hope.

Um, and you know, we're gonna get started right now with a topic.

What we do on Crash Course, so we try to cover a basic, you know, topic, a concept that's part of our faith.

We want to get you caught up to speed if you're someone who's new or you're just even trying to get your feet underneath you as far as what this really looks like and what it means to follow Jesus, what what this is really all about.

Um our topic today is the word church.

Can I stop you actually?

I forgot to ask.

When you were saying crash course, yes.

Can I ask you why that term?

Why crash course?

Because when I first heard it, what I thought was like my middle image was you got two pilots flying a plane, and one of them says, Hey, we just lost hydraulics and we're about to go down over the Hudson, and the other guy says, I've never done a water landing.

And the captain says, Well, maybe we need a crash course because we're about to die.

So is it that?

Or is it for new believers like you want to crash through a barrier so you don't have to have this barrier anymore?

It's funny because I I guess I've never thought about the origin of that phrase, and it probably does come from like a pretty high danger situation.

But I d I Okay, maybe I'm wrong.

Does it also have the connotation?

Doesn't it also have the connotation like a crash course is sort of just a quick get you caught up to speed?

Okay, good.

That's a good clarification.

Because if you hear that and you think you're not in trouble.

Yeah, as far as I know.

Especially if you're new to the whole Jesus thing.

It's not like you need to be scared to death.

Oh no, learn this or you're really gonna mess up.

Right.

It's it's not like you're sitting in the emergency exit row of a plane and uh really please pay attention if because you might need to know this.

Yeah.

Um, but but here's what I guess I will say.

Um so no, it doesn't have that kind of emergency context.

Uh at the same time, you know, I've I've been working in in the church for the last decade plus.

Um, and probably one of the the biggest things I run into as a pastor is people who who are following Jesus, who are excited about God, but they're they do lack some pretty basic understanding of some things.

Yeah, and it just get it makes it very easy for them to get off course, I guess, or off track.

So very easily confused.

Um, you know, in fact, we were in Guatemala not that long ago, and I never really thought about this.

This is kind of a heavy, I guess, comparison, so forgive me, but we're just we don't have a script on Crash Course.

Um, but they were talking about how in Guatemala there's a really high percentage of sex trafficking that happens in Guatemala, but the Guatemalan culture, you don't talk to your kids about that kind of stuff.

Like you it's the culturally, you don't you don't have the birds and the bees conversation with your children.

You just don't.

So it makes the kids because there's there's a lack of understanding and knowledge, it makes them very easily uh persuaded.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

And I and so there's this idea of lack of knowledge makes it really easy to to get confused.

Yeah.

And we just want to we want to clear that up.

We want to give you a crash course so that you have some clarity on what the Bible actually teaches and what some of the we say words sometimes in church like they're just common knowledge.

Yes.

And if we polled everyone in that was there, we'd probably have a variety of definitions for the word that we just used.

So we want to just have some unity on that.

So we're we're talking about church, every like everyone's favorite thing in the world.

You go ask a thousand people on the street, you just say, hey, word association, church, they're all gonna go, Disney World.

Bunch of hypocrites.

No, no, no.

No, no, it's it's a that's a loaded word.

Yeah.

And and we are a church, ultimately.

This this podcast is under the you know, it's part of our something our church is doing, his hands church.

And so, Ben, I guess I'll start with you.

You've you've grown up in church, right?

Yes.

We have a similar background, I think.

Like, you know, kind of grew up in church, and I was at a big Baptist church for years, and I would do do things and you know, lead worship and things like that on stage.

And then I've just continually either been on staff at church for a little bit after college, or even once I got into the computer stuff, I've always been really deep into it.

So it's definitely kind of part of the deep in kind of thing.

Yeah.

Because the you said the computer thing.

One of the things that I I guess we've never really said is not not everyone on on our podcasts that we do is like works at our church.

Um, we have a really awesome group of people at his hands.

And so there I'm so blown away because it in any given day, there's people that are I'm teaching, and I'm like, you know, so much more than me.

This is an odd experience, you know.

And and uh so Ben is a computer programming um mega genius.

Is that the word on your business card?

It says No, definitely not.

Megagenius.

Computers teach you humility more than anything else.

So it's that is that is an accurate statement.

Yeah.

I pretend like I know things to sell things, but behind the scenes, it's it's a desperate claw all day long.

Well, there's parallels to faith there, right?

To following but uh but yeah, so so we both grew up in church, and actually I grew up in a in a unlike you, I grew up in a small Baptist church.

Okay.

And uh but similar experience, and and honestly, I I I think where we do have a lot of similarity is I I didn't start going until I was in the fourth grade.

Okay, but like right away I liked it and I got excited about God and Jesus.

And I never really had a I never had a moment in my life where I was like, church sucks, and I don't want to go anymore.

Yeah, a lot of people have that.

They do.

But yeah, I I didn't either, yeah.

And so when I graduated high school and went to college and went four hours away from home, I wasn't like finally I'm free, I'm away from my parents, and I don't have to go to church.

I don't I first thing I did uh, you know, was look for a church in the city.

I was in Kansas City, Missouri.

I was like, I gotta find a good church.

Sure, yeah.

I love church, yeah.

Um, but I remember a pastor in college told me that, you know, if you asked the word, if you really did do that, if you polled people, you said the word church, you're gonna find about a third of people have positive reaction, about a third of people say, you know, really negative, and a third of people are just like, eh.

More importantly, I think it's really easy for us as Christians to sort of forget what the church actually is.

Yeah.

Because you have you can go to a church, but you're part of the church.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I that's I guess where I wanted to go with this, is is I mean, really, let's let's talk two things.

What is the church?

Okay.

And why should we why is it important for a believer to be involved in a church?

Does that make sense?

Sure.

Yeah.

So let's let's start with the first part.

What what what is the church?

You know, if you were to someone asks you that, hey, tell me what what the church is ultimately.

Yeah, it's well, it's hard to define because almost any definition you give is going to be too small.

True.

But the church, I think, from what the what the Bible gives us, the church is the body of Christ.

So it's what do you mean by body?

Because we we use those phrases.

In fact, we have a song on Sunday.

Yeah, yeah.

It's not it's not like a general term like uh that's just a body of people over there, or you know, like that's a a school of fish or something.

It's uh like a specific analogy that like Paul gives us, he imagines like uh a human body.

And so Jesus is the head, and so the same spirit of God that wanted to incarnate into the world and become flesh and blood and walk around as Jesus and show us exactly what God's like, when Jesus uh ascends into heaven, then he creates his church and he gives this great commission, and we can talk about the great commission.

And so Jesus as the head, he sends his spirit.

So whatever the I would define the church, whatever the Holy Spirit does now, which is Jesus being in us and around us and doing his work, that is what the church is.

Okay.

And then that has lots of different forms.

So whatever the Holy Spirit does, He sends us back into relationship, He's creating these groups that accomplish these amazing things, He's assembling these books that are written that eventually become the Bible.

Like the Holy Spirit does a lot of stuff, but all of that is just a word that we give for the work of the Spirit, but it's all underneath Jesus, because he's the head of it.

Yeah, so you see a lot of analogies in scripture.

You know, the the body, um, you know, we're like living temples and the spirit of God lives in us.

And, you know, even just as you're saying what you're saying, it kind of essentially you have to understand that what Jesus established on the earth, you know, what he what he accomplished was was a restored relationship between us and God through faith in him.

Yeah, um, because the the divide that exists between us and a relationship with God because of sin was taken care of on the cross.

Uh so Jesus accomplished that.

What he established was the church.

And the church is his it's his movement in this world to bring people into a relationship with him, and it's people.

That's always the that's always the amazing thing.

Um, by the way, it's a unique idea.

Really, it's pretty unique, I would say, to Christianity as a whole.

The idea that the concept of God, like a lot of faiths in the world, have a concept of God.

Ancient religions always had a concept of God or the gods.

Never are people really that important to the gods.

Yeah.

At best, they're tolerated.

Um, and if and if you work your hardest, you might just be like, okay, I'll accept you.

Yeah.

But the idea of God as we know him and his interaction with people is that he actually really loves people, created people for a very specific purpose, decides that he's gonna allow us to be his primary instrument in the world to do his work.

So Yeah, it's amazing.

It really is.

He has that level of trust in us.

Yeah.

Um, it's always challenging for me to remember to trust people more because obviously God does.

But but the church is God's people in this world, and the movement of God's people sharing Jesus, uh, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

You know, he established the church.

He said to Peter, you know, on this rock, there's a story where Peter's Peter was the first disciple to say, I think you're God, you know?

Yeah.

And he said, Hey, bingo, and on this rock, and rock was a tie-in to the Peter's name, I will build my church.

That rock and maybe a tie-in also to what he just said.

Right.

I was like, he said it's both those things together.

The the rock was not Peter, yes, the rock was that declaration and acknowledgement of who Jesus actually is.

And that came from like his spirit, the spirit of Jesus being together with Peter in that moment, that he could make that declaration, and that's the way God does his work.

Yeah, but yeah.

It's it's through us, and so as soon as it does come through us, like he's always affirming and blessing that, which is amazing.

Right.

So, yeah, so so kind of go back.

You know, the the story is Jesus says, Hey, who do you guys think I am?

Um, this is pretty early in his ministry, and there's all these rumors about who he is, and people are, you know, they're talking about Jesus.

And Peter goes, I think you're the Messiah.

I think you're the Son of God.

Yeah.

And Jesus goes, You're right.

No one told you this.

You didn't learn this from any God actually showed you this.

In other words, yeah, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit revealed this to you.

And upon this rock, upon the declaration that you've just made, the confession that Jesus is the Son of God, I'm gonna build my church.

And so the church is essentially the movement of Jesus in this world, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to bring all people into that same confession, that same realization that wow, Jesus is the Son of God, and I can know God by knowing him.

Yeah.

And so that's what ultimately the church is.

It's a movement.

Um, it's not an organization, it's an organism.

That's something I've heard said.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, it's like one of those phrases that it's kind of like cheesy, but I like it because it's true.

It's a live, we are, we are all the church.

So you don't you might go to a church, you might have been to a church, but if you are a follower of Jesus, you are the church, right?

Is that accurate?

Sure, oh yeah.

So you're the church, Ben's the church, I'm the church, you're the church, because we are the body of Christ.

We are the the ones he has chosen to use, and he leads us through the Holy Spirit to reveal him to this world, to love people, yeah, the way he loves people.

That's what he says, you know, the world will know you because the way you love one another, um, and to show people who he is and and what what he wants to be in their life.

Yeah, and to extend the analogy there, like Paul gives Jesus as the head of the church, and so we're all different members of that.

Like some people are hands or fingers or legs, and and so it's it's kind of dumb to for a foot to say to the hand, you're you're less of a member of the body of Christ.

Like what once we understand it in those terms, then everybody's important because all of us value every part of our bodies.

And if my arm is hurting, then my leg's not happy about that.

Right.

And so all this stuff, all the have we've divided it out, and you know, like all this, this church is here, and another church is over there, and denominations, all that, all that separateness isn't really part of the initial what what Paul's getting at there with the body of Christ, because all of it, everything the Holy Spirit does, Jesus working in us, all of it's the church.

It is a it is a really cool analogy because A, it's humbling because Jesus is the head, yeah.

And it keeps us from beginning to believe that we are the head, that it's like that's that we're the mind that's gonna figure it out.

Like sometimes you see that in the church world.

It's like this idea of I've got to I've gotta find this brilliant new idea.

And in reality, no, like Jesus is the head, he's the brain, he's the he's the we are that would not have been an appropriate name for for the church to be his head church.

His head church.

We are his hands church.

Right.

Because we understand he's the head, he's the head, and and we just we want to do his work, um, which is a really exciting thing.

You know, when you think about it, it's a really exciting idea that you and I can be useful to God.

Yeah.

And and again, I I go back to that idea.

If you if you study, if you spend very little time studying ancient religions, especially the way the people understood God at the time that the Bible was written, at the time that Jesus was coming about, if you were to go up to the average Greek, the average Roman and say, Hey, God, you are useful to him.

Yeah.

He actually has plans for you and wants to use you to do his work in this world, that would have been a concept as foreign to anyone on the planet at that time.

You might as well go talk to someone 2,000 years ago about the concept of like, I don't know, like, give me a concept today of like There's there's literally nothing to compare.

It's so outrageous.

But that button, show them a smartphone, and they would have been just as perplexed by a smartphone in 2,000 years ago as they would be by you know the idea that wait, got God, the concept of God loves us, wants to use us, and is inviting us into his work.

But but that's the mystery, like Peter's statement there, that I believe that you are the Christ.

Like I believe the same God that created the universe, God the Father, is standing in flesh and blood right before me right now.

And I believe that you are the Messiah.

Like that same miracle of God coming in the flesh, like that's that's God's ultimate vindication of yes, I want to do good in this world through human beings, because he came as a human being, as Jesus.

And so it's it shouldn't surprise us that now he wants to do that same kind of work in us through his spirit.

So we we continually go back to that shocking statement of or shocking realization that God came in the flesh, and that's what we do like each week, like Lord's Supper and all that kind of stuff, and in worship, and that's that kind of warms us up to the the miracle of him doing the same thing in us.

He is is gonna use me, and he can do that.

So if if you're someone who you know, if you're listening to this and and you have put your faith in Jesus, you're the church.

You are the body of Christ, you are the instrument that that Jesus wants to use to do his work in this world, and you have a you have a unique purpose, and it might be a different purpose than someone else that's part of the body.

Yeah.

Um, you know, you but it's it's important.

You know, there's not one part of my body that is that is unimportant.

Yeah.

Right?

And the same is true for you.

And I know we I said we would talk about, you know, what is the church and maybe why why should I be involved in a church?

I don't think we have time to go through both of those.

Okay, um, which is good, which is good.

So it's I I my favorite episodes of this are when we learn, when we just roll, it's like it every episode creates another episode.

It's good job security, even though no one gets paid to do this.

But uh, wait, no?

Oh, I didn't tell you that on the front, sorry.

I gotta go.

You gotta um so you're the church, and I think one thing I I would wrap up with here, and we'll we'll be finished.

There's not it's not we don't believe, nor nor is this anywhere in scripture, that there is one specific church, so to speak, yeah, that is the church.

So it's not that, you know, hey, if you're a it it it is all one.

That's the whole like the word Catholic and all that kind of stuff.

Like that's right.

Affirm that part, the one church, yeah.

We're not we're a non-denominational church, um, which is weird because in some ways that's become a denomination anymore.

Like, you know, it's like an it's just but but it's not that which church is really the church.

No, the reality is we we have different roles, we we should be so much more unified than we are because we're all one body.

Yeah, and we kind of do live in a world where sometimes the hands and the feet want to pretend like they're like they're the head, like they're the head or whatever.

But the reality is if you're someone who's given your life to Jesus, you're the church.

Let God use you and say yes to what he puts on your heart.

And and when you read his word and you see him tell you to value certain things, trust him in that, go with that, and watch him do his work in this world through you.

Um, it's awesome to be the body of Christ.

It's awesome to be the church.

You have his spirit, you can do it.

That's right.

All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this episode, but we will be back very soon with another.