Church for People Who Hate Church
Episode 2 transcript
JOHN YODER: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm John Yoder, together with pastors Sam Chacko and Moses Saldivar discussing the subject, Church for People Who Hate Church. Last time, Sam Chacko shared his story about brokenness and woundedness faced from different Indian churches in the process of being rejected to start a second generation English service.
[00:00:27] Sam shared that he and his wife despaired that either of them would ever find a church where they fit in, whether it was an Indian church or an American church or of any other kind. But you also heard the end of that story. That after a time of healing and restoration that Sam and his wife started Loft City Church that today has 30 different ethnicities represented. God has brought them not only to the place of personal healing but becoming a place of healing for [00:01:00] others.
[00:01:00] One of the most common criticisms of the church that we hear is that the church is judgmental and angry towards those who are outside and that concern has a lot of validity. As Christians, our Lord Jesus Christ commands us to recognize him as the one and only path to eternal life. He says in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. [00:01:30] No one comes to the Father except through me”. Here is what Pastor Moses has to say about the exclusivity of Christ.
MOSES SALDIVAR: [00:01:40] I think if you look at Jesus words himself, he didn't leave space to say, when he was, the time that he walked on earth, it was very much a pluralistic society minus in Jerusalem, but I think of the Romans and just the Roman pantheon of gods and all [00:02:00] of that.
[00:02:00] And so he walked in that space and very clearly in that space said that he was the only way. And so I think that it does us well to use his own words because a lot of people that will say Jesus wouldn't have said those things or would have been Jesus is love. And yes, God is love. But he also talks about the exclusivity of worship is due to the Godhead, to Yahweh himself.
[00:02:27] The other thing that I would also say is that I've heard the God of the Bible sounds like a very selfish God. One that if indeed he is wanting all of this worship be pointed to him, that sounds pretty selfish. Like, this just doesn't sound good. But if you look at the things that have happened throughout the entirety of scripture and the reason why Jesus had to come and how he's the way that brought reconciliation and restoration to how he brings restoration to the brokenness, that when you look at all of that [00:03:00] together, it is that through God looking out for himself and desiring all the glory that who still gets to benefit out of that and out of the overflow, it's us.
[00:03:13] And it's the only God you can go throughout any other religious system, where his desire for his own glory benefits his creation. If you go back to the very beginning of the way that the world was created, the way the universe was created, he said it was all good, and in that perfect state, it pointed to his glory, and showed who he was, and we all benefited from it.
JOHN YODER: [00:03:44] I think this first part, the exclusivity of Jesus in the gospel, is something that churches get more easily. But what's more difficult for churches is finding ways to speak graciously about those who are outside, but we must. [00:04:00]
Here is what Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2,:24-26: “A servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility, correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.”
[00:04:34] The question is, what do we actually do about this in the real world? We are a highly polarized society. We're angry about politics, race, gender, and more. One of the best ways to learn to speak in graciousness and kindness towards others is to speak face to face and not just from the pulpit or in social media. [00:05:00] Pastor Sam's church, Loft City, is a great role model of this. Here's their story.
SAM CHACKO: Pre-pandemic, we had extreme liberals, extreme conservatives. All were part of the same church. But, At least once a month, we all ate together. We all hung out. At the end of the day, regardless of your political position, I knew you by name, and I, you might have had a different viewpoint, but because I knew you, I loved you and was able to worship with you.
[00:05:29] And then pandemic happened. We were isolated for almost a year. No meals were happening. The only things we were seeing were what people were posting on social media about their opinions on stuff. And then it shifted to, you are identified by your views, not by who you are. Your identity became associated with your views on justice, politics, race, not on, being an image bearer of God who might have a different viewpoint than [00:06:00] me.
[00:06:00] And so it was, so I think, can liberals and conservatives worship together? Yeah, if we create space for dialogue, communication, relationships. But if, if there's not space for that, then it's just going to be very divisive. Pandemic was very hard because, because they weren't seeing each other. I was getting the brunt of all of the complaints about anything and everything.
[00:06:24] So I did a message on, I called it that we as followers of Jesus are called to be purple that we're not going to be red and we're not going to be blue. We're not going to fit in either camp, but we have elements of both sides that we that Jesus values and that's who God's called us to be.
[00:06:44] I got an email saying I was a liberal and I was an ultra conservative from 2 different people. It was encouraging that they couldn't figure out where I stood, but at the same time. They were so sensitive of what other people were [00:07:00] saying or viewpoints. That's all they heard.
[00:07:02] They just heard, Oh, he said something that sounds liberal. So he's a liberal, or he said something that's conservative. So that sounds, so he's a conservative and, but they missed the rest of it.
In the midst of pandemic, we lost our extreme conservatives and our extreme liberals. And, and it's sad because I think, I don't know if they've, Either side has really gone to other churches. [00:07:23] I think they have, they've withdrawn from church period. It's just disappointing because there's no church that can appease them.
JOHN YODER: Here's what Pastor Sam believes that underlies the reasons why dialogue is so important to them.
MOSES SALDIVAR: The invitation of Jesus is that we are called to die. We are called to die to ourselves. [00:07:45] And I think we're called to live the life that Jesus lived. I think the model of Jesus was that the life of Jesus, he spoke graciously to Roman centurions. He spoke [00:08:00] graciously to those in, those who were oppressing him. He was willing to heal and the servants here that Peter cut off, he was often willing to give more grace.
[00:08:13] When we are, like, it's not wrong to be angry about issues, but when we start attacking people, when we start attacking who others, that's a dangerous place to be. When we move away from issues, and then we start literally attacking people's names and people's character. We are attacking people made in the Imago Dei.
[00:08:40] And so, when we start people calling people names, when we belittle people, when we call them whatever it may be, we are dishonoring Jesus. And we all have issues, we all have issues that we're passionate about, and we should stay true to our core and our convictions, but we should not move from issues to character [00:09:00] assassination to attacking people just because they disagree with us.
[00:09:03] And I would encourage you, like, if your entire circle of influence and the people that speak into you and the news feeds are all the same as you. Maybe you're in a bubble. Go sit with people that disagree with you. Go get to know them, get to hear their stories, get to hear about their lives, and you'll quickly realize that, yeah, we might disagree, and that's okay. [00:09:28] Man, there's, I'm missing out because I'm not in a relationship with these people.
JOHN YODER: One of Pastor Moses’ insights is that it's easier for us to speak angrily of others if we believe that their sins are worse than ours.
MOSES SALDIVAR: I think the one thing that we have to realize and recognize is that because of sin, humanity lives in a state of brokenness and that brokenness manifests in different ways.
[00:09:54] And you can pick out any one of the sins. And in God's [00:10:00] eyes, he doesn't view them any differently. He views them all the same. And so I would say that we need to view them in the same way and in the same light, but at the same time, also not make one worse out to be the other, because he doesn't view it that way.
[00:10:15] With that said, we also know that there are, that if we continue to live in that brokenness, apart from Christ, we know that there will be a cost to pay for that in time. And so we have to be willing to, to view those things in the same way.
For example, the one that comes out probably the most right now is homosexuality. [00:10:38] And the issue with what we see or what we find is that we will talk about homosexuality a heck of a lot more than we'll talk about the adulterer. And we see that in our churches, where we've got, we'll talk about homosexuality, but yet what we see come out every day, sadly, are [00:11:00] pastors who have fallen, who have committed the sin of adultery, and then very quickly seem to be restored. [00:11:06] Whether it be in their own congregations or they go somewhere else and they are elevated to position of authority.
And for young people to say, If things are equal in God's eyes, why are you elevating this one thing over that? You're not calling out the log that's in your own eye. That's what they're seeing.
[00:11:22] So we do that to the detriment of ourselves. We need to be able to be willing to call things are for what they are. That does not mean also, right? That we totally wash our hands of these folks that are walking in these particular sins. And we say, we're unwilling to be there to that. God can't redeem them.
[00:11:39] They're too lost or whatever it may be. We have to be willing to walk along with them in the midst of all of that. But that is scripture is also very clear though, that if we continue to walk in that sin, that doesn't show repentant heart that shows a desire to, for that [00:12:00] bent, are we saying that bent is more worthy of our time than Jesus?
[00:12:09] Are we wrapping up our identity more in my sexual orientation than as a follower of Jesus? Am I unwilling to am I going to idolize sex so much that I am going to be continually be unfaithful to my wife? You know that those things go very much hand in hand. We can't continue to walk in those things. So we can't elevate one of those things over the other. So we have to be mindful of that. We also have to be willing to recognize it for what it is and clearly what God's word says about those particular things and to deny that or to look the other way.
[00:12:46] You're not only setting someone that's not truly loving. It's just not to continue to do something or allow someone to walk into space. It's going to harm themselves. That is not loving. And so we have to be [00:13:00] willing to navigate that with people and understanding that it is going to be messy. Um, and it's okay to call those things out in a loving manner, but also show that you're still going to be present. You're going to be there and you're not going to just wash your hands of them because that's honestly, that's what a lot, especially for the next gen, it's a lot of what they see.
And even if they're not walking, let's say again, we'll use homosexuality as an example. Even if they're not walking through that themselves, they know of people that are and that are struggling with that. And for you to say or to present something in a way, like, this isn't a space for them, also communicates to them that's not a space for them as well. So we just have to be very mindful of that. [00:13:42] Again, doesn't mean that you don't address it, it's just how you address it.
JOHN YODER: So there you have it, friends. The laws of Jesus have not changed over time. Honor your father and mother. Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not commit adultery. Do not be jealous of anything that [00:14:00] belongs to your neighbor. And all of us have come short of those standards.
[00:14:05] All of us are broken, all of us need grace, all of us needs healing. And because that is true, all of us have the capacity of speaking of one another in love. Next time, we are going to talk about why healthy churches need to embrace cultural diversity, why they need to embrace single people as well as marrieds, And why they need to help people form healthy, loving, spiritual communities.
