Imagine, if you will, a world unlike anything you have ever known or experienced. A world without Sunday morning gatherings, without the echo of hymns and sanctuaries, without pulpits, pews, or the sounds of a preacher's voice calling souls to redemption. A world where no deacons serve, and no pastors shepherd, and no congregation unites in prayer. In this reality, the church as we know it never was. It is not history nor memory, it is nothing more than a figment of imagination. You are about to step beyond the veil into a dimension where faith has no fellowship, where the body has no unity, and where hope walks alone. Welcome to For the Love of the Church, Season 3. Okay, so in the first layer of this game that we're playing, this mental exercise, we're going to say there is no such thing as the local church. The local church never existed. So we're going to deal with ordinances. Now, an ordinance, Dave, is a... Would you like to tell the class? I would love to tell the class. This is like a pop quiz. Why don't you stand and answer what an ordinance is? Now, an ordinance, obviously, there's two of them that we believe that are really representatives and ways of describing and picturing realities of the Christian life, baptism and the Lord's Supper. So baptism, obviously, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. And then the Lord's Supper is, in a way, representing that, but obviously looking forward to proclaiming His death, proclaiming what He's done for us, but then looking forward to when we will be able to have that communion and that fellowship and relationship with Him in eternity. Obviously, those two ordinances are there. You know, we know there could be people listening to our podcast who come from a church background that would say there's actually a third one, and that's foot washing. And, you know, so I guess our topic today is not so much on how many ordinances as opposed to just what do we do with the ordinances in general. So for our purposes, I think we're gonna stick to baptism in the Lord's Supper. That's right. But we also acknowledge that there's a broad variety of thought out there on ordinances. Yeah, this is on defending and defining all the ordinances. Yeah, so I remember I was in India. I was voluntold that I was going to be doing some baptisms, and I had some reservations about it. serious ones like one i didn't know these people were believers yeah because i don't speak their language two i felt like there might have been some aspect of i got baptized by the american guy opposed to just the normal guy i felt like there's a specialness to that or uh yeah they got something yeah yeah i got a spiritual up right and then the the other thing was um i didn't know the language and we were doing it in the the bay of bengal and so I voiced these concerns. And the one was, well, what happens if they don't know how to swim? And they said, oh, don't worry. They know what to do. They're excited about this. So we go out to the bay. And we have to walk out because it's low tide. So we have to walk way out, right? So we are waist deep. I'm still thinking, oh, we're too deep. But this is where we stopped. we had to like time it with the waves right because the waves were coming so this lady came out she was dressed in her finest clothes and i said something to her like hi how are you you know so glad you're making this decision she looked at me because she didn't know english and was like okay whatever right right so i i don't know what to do right because like I got a dunker, right? Right. Because I'm baptizing her. She doesn't understand a single command I'm giving. Right. So if you're watching this and you have no idea what's going on, it looks like there's some white American dude, some Indian dude walk or some Indian lady walks up and I just grab her, right? Right. Because we got to dunk her. Right. And she's confused. Right. I'm confused, right? Because I was like, I thought you already knew how to do this. She's fighting for her life thinking I'm trying to drown her. I'm not. Yeah. And so I'm yelling, it's okay. Well, at first I was like, it's okay. It's okay. And then she continues to fight. And I was like, it's okay. It's okay. Right. Cause yelling it louder helps her understand it more. Theoretically. I don't know. We're all confused. She's fighting. She's like starting to slip out. She doesn't know how to swim. I was told that before we went in, so that was super neat. So all of my fears, right, are coming out of this baptism, right, this ordinance. But one of the things I said was I don't want to do this because I think it bypasses the church leadership, the local church leadership, right? Like I want them to be seen as the spiritual leaders who will keep her accountable because they were the ones that recommended for her to be baptized. So this isn't just a formality. There's a certain thing. So if there's no local church, when it comes time to baptism... There's no leadership to bypass. That's right. Now you're commanded to baptize, right? Jesus said... Matthew 28. Matthew 28. So Yeah, so what does that look like then if there's no local church? It would be individualistic, right? It's very individualistic. I think it's very much like Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch type of deal. Right. So baptism, so in our hypothetical, theoretical scenario of this season, we would have to say baptism still exists. Yep. Baptism still takes place. It's gonna be such that, you know, as I lead somebody to the Lord and they feel convinced that they should get baptized or maybe I talk to them about baptism, you know, the two of us can wander out and kind of do our thing and I can dunk them and then we move on. It really, from the baptism standpoint, takes away that public spectacle of a group setting, if you will, group dynamic, which is not necessarily an issue. So baptism still exists. Baptism still happens. But I think it's less impactful, maybe, if you will. It's just more subtle, more quiet. It's just like I'm walking down the road next to a lake and I see two dudes out there, and I don't know what they're doing, but one of them just put the other one under the water and came up and like, okay, whatever, that's cool. I don't know what they got going on out there. That type of thing. So it's subtle. It's quiet. It's passive. It still exists. It still happens. It's still all the stuff, but it's just not this process. Yeah, because baptism is saying, I'm identifying with Christ. I'm identifying with the teachings of Christ. And it's a step of discipleship of saying, I'm not gonna follow Christ. So there's that publicness is important, right? And that publicness adds an accountability of somebody that's visibly publicly. And when you have it inside of a local church, you have a, well, these are the people that are gonna keep them accountable to this. When you just do it publicly and there's no assembly, Yeah, who are the believers? I don't know. There's believers there. There has to be. I don't know who they are. There's no association. There's no local building. So yeah, you just go out, dunk somebody. Who do you tell that this is happening? Yeah, I don't even know. Do you do a public kind of announcement of like, hey, I'm going to dunk this guy in the water next week or this afternoon? then I think you'd have to, like, okay, why? Well, because he placed his faith and trust in Christ. Oh, okay. But there's no sense in which this is tied to a local church, or this is tied to a local church gathering. And I think even, okay, so even within this hypothetical, the local church doesn't exist, it even answers the question or pushes us into the question of, does baptism have to occur by a pastor? Does a pastor have to be the one to baptize people? Well, in our local churches, there are, I mean, there's differing opinions on this, obviously, but there are some churches who would say, no, baptism can only occur from a pastor. A pastor baptizes. When in reality, if the local church didn't exist, and we're gonna talk about this in one of our next episodes, is there is no pastor. So Matthew 28, given to believers to go out and baptize, all believers should be able to baptize people. And we could get into the nuances of, okay, so let's kind of plug the local church back in, and we wake up from this theoretical dream, and now the local church exists. Should we be radically changing the concept of baptism to say, well, anybody can baptize at any place? Well, there's some biblical evidence that that's probably okay. Obviously, each local church is gonna have to play that out. But in a hypothetical scenario, where there is no local church, every believer is capable of baptizing. That's right. Yeah, and the lack of accountability is obvious, right? And so it becomes less as a public statement. It becomes now more of an individualistic thing, right? Because by the nature of what it is. Yeah. Yeah, because, well, when you think about in Acts 2, when they had the first Christian baptism, right? There was the preaching of the gospel, all these people believed, Peter baptized them, and then you have this idea that they all stuck together, right? So they all cling together. So if there was no church, Well, then what's so important about the apostles baptizing? Like what's so important about them sticking together? So you kind of lose that whole sticking together, that cohesion of the publicness. And those are the people that identify with Jesus. You might go, that's an individual guy, maybe, but it seems now more it's like, oh, I got baptized for me. Which ironically leads us to, there's a lot of people who think that about baptism anyways. There's several people that have come to me for baptism and says, I just think I need a jolt in my Christian life. Yeah, right. Wrong, wrong. There's really, you don't get spiritual bonus points. Right. It's not like a plus five in your agility if you get baptized, right? Yeah. It's a proclamation, it's a step, it's a declaration of, I'm identifying with Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's two, in my mind, there's two aspects as well with this idea of baptism apart from the local church. As far as the local church doesn't exist, we still baptize. But in one sense, there's, and this is fine, I suppose, you know, we're, especially some of the mega churches will do these mass baptisms, if you will, like a hundred people get baptized and it's a spectacle and it's a thing. There's a beauty in that, honestly, of this kind of big public gathering, big public declaration. And I think that's what's lost in this hypothetical when we're just out kind of, I'm as an individual baptizing somebody. I'm not doing it in this grand spectacle of 100 people are getting baptized. That could happen. But there's also this reality within baptism that at least in the types of churches that I grew up in, baptism typically occurred on a Sunday night, if we had a Sunday night service, or Sunday morning maybe, in the confines of that local assembly's building with other believers who were obviously rejoicing at somebody being baptized, but there wasn't the sense of the public demonstration of what baptism actually stands for. And so in some sense, If we remove the local church out of the equation, and this is all a hypothetical thing, obviously, but the local church doesn't exist, and now we're thinking about baptism. Baptism has to be a public, it's a public thing. So you've got a lake, or you've got a body of water, and it's a public setting, and people are walking by, and now there's a person baptizing somebody else. It's gotta engender questions and thoughts. Obviously, if you're gonna do this in a public setting, it's gonna do that. Even as we eventually kind of put the church back into the equation, which it really is, we have to think about, should our baptisms within our local church be done in this private context of the building, or should they actually be a little bit more public? Where a church says, yeah, we've got a baptistry in our church, but we actually believe that this should be a public declaration. We're going to go to a public beach, a public place, a public lake, whatever it may be, and we're actually going to do this in a public location so that it is a public declaration of that. Because that's going to have significant impact on the view of baptism and our engagement of baptism. Yeah, that's a really good point. 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Cincinnati, Missouri? Cincinnati, Illinois? Or all of them? Done. I've already done it for myself. By the way, you can't block my monuments. I created this project. Want to commemorate your little league championship? Grandma finally texting without an emoji? A personal triumph only you care about? I don't care, but you do, and that's the beauty of it. With Jeff Yant AR Monuments, you get to celebrate what matters to you and filter out what doesn't. So stop being stuck with monuments that you don't care about. Go create your own, because in the world of AR Monuments, it's your time to shine. I would say there would also be some other disconnections, too, if there's no local church. So Paul, in his writings of Romans and 1 Corinthians, he talks about baptism, but us being baptized into Christ, right? The Holy Spirit's baptism. And specifically in 1 Corinthians 12, it says we get baptized into one body. So there's this idea that we get baptized into the body of Christ. AKA the body of Christ is the church. So if there's no local church, no physical representation, that becomes then a very abstract concept. So it's, okay, I'm baptized into this universal thing that I never see. How am I part of this big group? I don't know what that means. I don't know how I'm baptized into the church. Okay, so there's a lot more ambiguity of like, Okay, I guess I just have to trust God that there's this big group called the church. I don't know what that looks like. It's theoretical to me. It's nebulous. Whereas when you have a local church, that becomes a little bit more obvious. It's almost as if the local church is like a taste of that bigger. So I get baptized at a church. I become a member of that church, right? That whole process. I then can go, okay, I understand I have a part to play in this local church. Ergo, I have a part to play in the larger church. So, it's easier to understand that reality of the universal church, being in the body of Christ. There's a lot of metaphors that come from that that are understood and learned because the baptism happens within the confines of a local church. Without that, that would be really confusing, right? We would have like a class and we would go, okay, you're part of a big thing. We don't see it, we don't really know it. Yeah, just take it on faith and let's go out and have coffee. It's a theoretical concept. Well, I think too in the local church then that plays out to say we have a common bond obviously in Christ and in our salvation. But even a step further, we have a common bond in our baptism, which is, I'm part of and connected to a group of people who have publicly identified with Christ. So they've made a professional faith, they've placed their faith and trust in Christ, that's great. But there's a public declaration that's been made of, I am publicly identifying with Christ. And I think in America, in our American context, baptism is like, not a big deal. But dude, you know, I was just in Doha, Qatar a couple of weeks ago, and you get saved in Doha, and you have a baptism in Doha in a public setting, like that raises the stakes a bit. Now, I feel a whole lot more connected to those brothers and sisters who have also publicly declared their faith and trust in Christ, and so that has a whole lot more meaning and significance to it, so baptism, In this theoretical sense of like if there's no local church, baptism can still take place. But if we plug the local church back in, we wake it back up, it is a reality. I think we have to think through the realities of how we do baptism. and how we view baptisms. It's not just a, like, it's just not a formality, a ritual of whatever, you know, type of thing, but it's to say, wow, we are united together as brothers and sisters who have placed our faith and trust in Christ and who have publicly declared ourselves to be believers. That's right, yeah. And that's really hard to see if there's no local church. It is, yeah. Yeah. So we lose, you lose the impact, even though baptism is still there, the ordinance is still there, you lose the impact a bit. Yeah. in the public spectacle of that. That's right. And then, of course, the other ordinance is the Lord's Supper. So when we think about this hypothetical that the local church does not exist, does communion still take place? And what's the impact of that? What's the difference? What's the change in communion? Well, when we look at 1 Corinthians 11, Yeah, the amount of time that Paul says, when you come together, when you come together, you know, as many times as you come together. So, in a sense, this is a very communal thing, right? Very localized, very communion. Well, that's why we call it communion, because we're in communion with each other, right? So, there's a lot of togetherness. So, you remove that togetherness. Now it just becomes like a, I don't know, a weird thing you do by yourself, right? At a lunch break, I'm gonna take communion. Well, why? Well, I'm proclaiming the Lord's death. Proclaiming it to who? Right, right. What, you're gonna get all your buddies together at work and like, can you watch me do this as I proclaim the Lord's death? Like, how are you proclaiming it? Who are you identifying with, right? It becomes... It becomes so individualistic, right? It becomes such a me thing. Whereas when you look at Paul, it's this idea of the church is coming together and we're remembering what Jesus Christ has done together. We're celebrating the gospel together. And we have these, for lack of a better term, symbols, right? These elements that each one represents something. And we go, okay. And so it causes us to look at the cross, right? It's constantly pointing us back to the cross and sharpening us as a group. If you don't have that, how's the group being sharpened if we're doing it individualistically, right? The logistics of how to do that together would be nuts, right? Like even if you were trying to do that together, let's say you and I, there was no local church, we did coffee and what will we order? Like, oh, could you bring out like bread and juice for like the end, like instead of dessert? Yeah, and then you're just two weird dudes sitting at a coffee shop. splitting a piece of bread and drinking some juice. Yeah. And who knows why and who cares why? And it's like, okay, whatever. I don't know what you guys are doing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, then it just becomes like an individual thing, right? And so it then become, I could then see it as being a really sense of self-righteousness, right? Like, do you know how many times I did the Lord's Supper today? Oh yeah, you can do it all the time. Yeah, I do it every hour. We take a whole loaf of bread and make that thing last for 12 hours. I took communion for 12 hours. That's right. I'm not stopping. I'm not stopping. We have perpetual communion. Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, we're joking in some of the sense, but there's a reality, I think, that when the local church doesn't exist, not when, if the local church doesn't exist, communion can still take place. Baptism can still take place. But I think what we have to conclude is this, the powerful impact and message being declared by those two ordinances is drastically diminished. So it's all, okay, so like we talked about the brilliant genius of the local church. that through the local church, the proper implementation of these ordinances gives the greatest maximum impact and demonstration of the power of Christ through the ordinances. They're not just habitual ritual things that we do, like yada, yada, yada, we've seen a thousand people get baptized, in our little baptistry, in our church. Nobody else sees it in the public, but we've seen it all 1,000 times. It's like, whatever. Or we've taken communion 1,000 times before. It's no big deal. But actually, when we think about the reality that that local church and its ability to do communion together or to do baptisms together is the greatest accelerant of the impact and maximization of the impact of the Lord's death, burial, and resurrection. It's like, you know, if the church didn't exist, we would be whispering the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, but under the local church and the power of the local church, we are actually blaring the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ in a magnificent way. Absolutely, and I would even contend, even if the individuals are taking communion with the wrong... Let's say they are very me-centered. This is just a ritual. Even just the practice in a local church does that. In a way that if you did it individualistically, it wouldn't do it. So even when a church does do a baptism, everybody goes, oh, that's just the rite of passage for that kid. It still resonates the intended purpose of it. It's still shouting it through a loudspeaker. Yeah, even if God is glorified through the bad theology and self-righteous practice of the church. Right, and so the thing itself constantly does what God intends for it to do, even if the action is imperfect, right? Because there's been plenty of times where probably you and I, we've been in services, or we've done baptisms, or we've seen communion services, and we just go, oh man, this feels weird. There's something off here. It seems very formalistic, or it's too informal, right? I don't know if you've ever been into one of these where it's too informal. Well, like the prepackaged little deal, like take it on your way out and do it in your car or whatever. Yeah, yeah, come on. Yeah, what are we doing? Yeah, what are we doing? A baptism, I know we mentioned Philip and the Ethiopian with baptism, and I think that's probably a very unique case in redemptive history, and God gave us that account specifically to show the reach of the gospel, but I have seen people who've had such a laissez-faire approach to baptism that it's like, yeah, I don't want to become a member because I don't want to be baptized." Well, we really think that it's important that you are a disciple of Christ in order to be a member, and then you'd get a text and go, oh, yeah, well, my buddy just did it in the creek. Right. You just baptized me in the creek, so I can baptize now. Right. And you go, no, come on. Yeah. You know that's not gonna fly. Like, yeah like we know what you're doing yeah can you do that sure yeah should you do that no no yeah yeah allowing yourself to be engaged in a mechanism that that exponentially magnifies the supremacy of Christ and the work of Christ and the engagement of Christ. So when I pastored in Michigan, we would do our baptisms outside and I really, really liked that. And I wish in some ways we would have been even more public, but we always kind of had to kind of move around and figure out where the best place to do it was. But I think baptisms should, I mean, this is just Dave, I know everybody can have their own opinion, but I think if we're gonna take this reality to the practical application to say, our baptism should actually be very public. Find a local public body of water where the community is going to be visibly present and then baptize people there. That's the heartbeat of baptism is to say, I'm publicly declaring this. And I used to talk about, like when I pastored too, about, um, If we can figure out how to have communion in a public setting, I think there's a validity to that, too, to say it's easy for us to gather as believers in our church, surrounded by our four walls, where nobody from the outside really sees us. and we can, oh yeah, I identify with Christ, and I take the bread, which represents his body, and the juice, which represents his blood, and yeah, it's no big deal, but I tell you what, go out into the middle of the town square and say, actually, this represents Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. I'm participating, I'm identifying with that in a public setting. where people are hostile to the gospel and hostile to Christ, that's the issue. But even within our box church, four-walled church, doing this communion in Lord's Supper, or communion in baptism rather, is the best magnification of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ over against if there was no local church and we were just doing this individualistically.