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Welcome to The Overflow—the bonus round of faith and real-life conversation with Brandon and Susan Thomas. Every week, they unpack the powerful insights, behind-the-scenes experiences, and personal reflections that didn’t quite fit into Sunday’s sermon.
This is where the conversation gets practical, honest, and a little bit unscripted. Whether it's an encouraging word, a deeper dive into Scripture, or a hilarious moment from their week, Brandon and Susan bring fresh perspective and spiritual fuel to keep you going.
It’s real talk, fresh takes, and full hearts.
These are the conversations too good to cut and too real to miss.
So I wanna talk about all the bullets that are being shot at the American church, at Western Christianity, and today I just can't take it anymore. I want to defend, I want to stand up for the American church. I want to talk about why we have buildings. I want to talk about why we have worship the way we worship.
Speaker 2:Why we gather, why we come together.
Speaker 1:I wanna talk about why lots of people come together. So today, we're going to defend the American church. Welcome to The Overflow. And I was just recently on social media, I saw a video of someone I really, really admire. I really do admire.
Speaker 1:I admire their story. I admire their faith. I admire their family, and have really had a lot of respect for them from a distance, never met them. And they were on video, and they were just taking shot after shot after shot after shot at the American church. It was a shot at the buildings, the houses of worship.
Speaker 1:It was a shot at the way that we worship. It was a shot at the music. It was a shot at the giving. It was just And I was in shock at the shots.
Speaker 2:Because of who it was, those moments when you look to someone you respect, you admire, and they're a fellow brother or sister in Christ, those moments can really rattle us. And you've been fired up about this all morning.
Speaker 1:I have been fired up about this because I feel like that the Western church has taken so many shots from friendly fire. And I wanna be clear that honestly, may be one of the least watched overflows that we've ever done because I understand that not everybody is really even interested in this. Most of the people, honestly, that come to Keystone, this isn't a concern of theirs. They love the way we worship. They love the way we gather.
Speaker 2:Right. And you may be coming into this moment, this conversation, and you may even go to a different church. You may be all over America. We don't know where you are. But the reality is you need to lean into this message because Jesus loves his bride, the local church.
Speaker 2:Jesus loves the church. We should too. And I believe this conversation actually can equip us and open our eyes to something that's actually bigger than the person that you were listening to or anyone that he may represent. It's an enemy strategy that the enemy has against God's people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The enemy wants to divide the church. And so in defending American Christianity, in defending the Western culture, the western Christianity, western church, I am not saying that it's arrived. Am not saying it's perfect. I am not saying it's beyond critique.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying any of those things. But what I am saying is, hey, this is still the bride of Christ, and maybe by the end of today, we will have a greater understanding of why we do some of the things that we do, and maybe even appreciate it. But also, if that's not where you land, maybe we can have a little more charity and a little more grace toward one another.
Speaker 2:That's so powerful. You know, it's interesting as you said that, something that popped into my mind as we kick off this conversation is the pattern throughout humanity where people like to rewrite God's rules. People like to rewrite and redesign and try to restructure and deconstruct what God has constructed. And when you think about the church, the bride of Christ, she may come in many different packages, many different packaging throughout hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years. Yet she is God's people who gather in Jesus name on mission to seek and save the lost.
Speaker 2:And it makes me think about marriage. You know, God uses the example that the church is his bride. Well, we live in a culture where marriage is trying to be deconstructed. That some people would say, you don't even need to be in a marriage covenant. You could just you don't need a piece of paper.
Speaker 2:Well, I make the correlation because I believe that what you're talking about and we are talking about today is how people try to do that to god's church. We make it what we want it to be, and we shoot bullets.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna make this point quick. I hadn't thought of it till you mentioned it, but you're right. The deconstruction thing, that is a result of the postmodern world that we're living in now, it is a strategy of the enemy in every facet. It's in our politics, it's in our it's in our definition of marriage, it's in our definition of quote love, it's in how even definition of gender. Everywhere you turn, deconstruct, deconstruct, deconstruct, and it's breaking my heart that the yell of deconstruction is coming from friendly fire.
Speaker 1:It's coming from Christians, and as Christians who've had bad experiences in church, as Christians who have church hurt, which we understand. We've had church hurt. Yes, we have. We understand it. But the response is, let's ditch it.
Speaker 1:And I think that we can do better than that. So, let's jump in, and first let's talk about why we have buildings. And the sentiment is, Susan, that people say in Acts chapter two, which is the birth of the local church, in Acts chapter two they met in homes, In Acts chapter two, they shared meals. And the thought there is, we need to look like Acts chapter two. Okay, we need to model our church just like that.
Speaker 1:Now, let me say this for the home church movement. I am for you, okay? A church, we started Keystone in our homes. We did. So, this is a grown up house church.
Speaker 1:Yes. We started as a house church. If God were to shine his favor upon the house church movement, and all over America we had thousands of house churches all over America, in every community, in every neighborhood, and that's the way God wanted to move. And that's the way the church would just grow, and that's the way people would come to Christ like never before. I would be the first to celebrate, clap, and jump in.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know me.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:We'd be like, okay, that's where God is, we're doing it, let's We do not worship buildings.
Speaker 2:No, no sacred cows.
Speaker 1:There's no sacred cows. But just a little theology about buildings. You're like, what? Theology of buildings? Absolutely, theology of buildings.
Speaker 1:When God in Genesis gave his dominion mandate to Adam and Eve, it was fill the earth, govern it, and then have dominion here, have dominion here, have dominion here. And some people believe that God's design for humanity was to leave the earth, almost like virgin raw earth. No buildings, just grass prairie lands, and unfortunately, if that's your vision, that is not God's vision. We know this because what we see the culmination of his vision is in Revelation twenty one and twenty two. In Revelation twenty one and twenty two, we see the culmination of God's design and desire for planet earth, and it includes trees and nature and all that, but there's a perfect synthesis of nature and architecture.
Speaker 1:The Bible says that God will bring new Jerusalem from heaven to Jerusalem. That's one of reasons I love visiting Israel, is that's our future home. That is not our own, the whole earth is our future home, but that's where God will set up his rule and reign from that place, literal place. And where God rules is not in the middle of a field, he rules from a new temple. So God will build, He will come and construct, or have constructed, a brand new temple where He will set up shop from which He will rule the earth, and the Bible paints a picture of trees, and the Bible paints a picture of rivers, and yet there's this beautiful synthesis of park and building and architecture.
Speaker 1:And so, just a little theology about buildings. So, remark a little bit before I get going.
Speaker 2:Well, as you were saying that, it made me think how we're made in God's image and how God, when he was just standing or whatever he was doing, looking at over the expanse of nothing, and the holy spirit was hovering above, And God was about to begin creating, and that he began creating from nothing with his words such intricacies of everything that exists, you and me, animals, the sky, the moon. I mean, all of this was a builder at work. And then he made humans, and he said, we're gonna make them in our image. Go have dominion. And one of the things that people do is we build.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned architecture, and that's where I I just imagined us in the image of our creator being given the authority and the ability to create. And as we talk about the church and you're right now talking about the building, and I know you're gonna talk about the temple. It's so powerful. But a thought that I have is spoiler alert. Your house is a building.
Speaker 2:Yep. I mean, I just wanna say, unless you live under the sky, you live in a building.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:It's called a house, but it is a structure. It is a building. And so sometimes we try to re again, rewrite God's design with our preference.
Speaker 1:And the preference here from from the cynical view toward American Christianity, the preference here is this, and it's extreme view from the deepest cynic. This is what I have gathered, and this is not a glancing view. I've been watching this for a long time, and I see a pattern, And the pattern is, number one, we're not gonna spend money on buildings, okay? We're not going to pay a bunch of pastors. We're not going to have a big staff.
Speaker 1:We're not gonna have an expensive kids ministry. What we're gonna do is, in its extreme form, is my family will gather and worship in our living room, okay? So the first thing about that is what you're saying is, okay, your family is a church, because God has clearly said throughout the New Testament, the church, the church. What is a church? What is a church?
Speaker 1:And your family, I would love it if your family were to gather and worship together and read the Bible together, but your family is not a church except in extreme persecution, where that's all you can do is as a family gather like that. But God's norm for the church is we gather, we've talked about this before. What's the difference between a Bible study and a church? We gather, we have spiritual leadership, we have pastors, we have Ephesians chapter four offices, we have serving, we have evangelism, we have baptism, we have giving, we have mission, we have sacrifice, we have spiritual leaders who can provide church discipline and church confrontation. None of that is present, very little of that is present in the model that says, I just want to gather with my family, and I'm the leader of my home, and I'm the leader of my church.
Speaker 1:It strikes me that you don't want a pastor in your life, you don't want a spiritual authority in your life, and you wanna spend more of your money on you. You wanna spend more of your money to have a bigger house, to have more toys, and you don't like being challenged to give at the local church. And then the response may be, well no, I just want my money to go to the needy, I want my money to go to those who are poor, I want my money, and I would say, you don't have to choose. God's chosen vehicle for new things to happen on earth, His chosen vehicle for new heaven, new earth, for it to come, His chosen vehicle for the great commission is the church. Jesus died for the church, and that's God's design.
Speaker 1:And God's design is those things. There's marks of what a church is. A church gathers, and a church grows. A church has spiritual leadership. A church has spiritual challenge.
Speaker 1:And I would just encourage you to challenge yourself. Now, if you're meeting all those requirements, and you're in a home, go for it. I think that's fantastic. But from the deepest corner of the cynic's chair, that's not what I'm seeing.
Speaker 2:Yes. And I think a lot of people when they gather and or they have this this hurt against the church or this cynical view of the church or this suspicion of the church, Or as you said, really, I just don't wanna sacrifice for the church. I don't want someone telling me what to do or not to do. I don't desire authority, spiritual authority in my life at all. All of those things point to something deeper inside of us that is truly just resisting God, resisting his design.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to the church, here's the beautiful thing. There's so much room for creativity. It's not about your size. It's not about what kind of building you're in or which building. Or like you said, if house churches all over the world began to explode with salvations and baptisms and growth, the question is, is your gathering a true church biblically defined as you talked about?
Speaker 2:And is your church growing? Is your church growing? And we have many different friends in many different areas of church life with many, many different preferences. We love our church. We love the church we have the privilege to serve in and to have community in.
Speaker 2:But it's not the only way to do church.
Speaker 1:That's
Speaker 2:right. And we celebrate other preferences and other ways. It may not be the way we might do something, but as long as it's biblical, we celebrate the creativity of God's bride. And I believe that's something that for me personally, I wish that all over the globe, we could celebrate one another rather than rip each other. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I wish that we could be people who see God's handiwork and creativity and celebrate what God is doing in that other body rather than critique it and assume that because it's not like we do it, there must be something wrong. If it's biblical, roll it out
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:With all the creativity God would give you.
Speaker 1:You know, there's there is on the one hand, people lament and they cry, and they shed tears over the statistics that have shown historically the church in decline. And yet, the places where the church is exploding and growing, those same people who complain about the decline of the church shoot bullets at the churches that are actually growing. They say, Oh, well, I don't wanna grow like that, but that's how God is growing His church, and He does it in a lot of different ways. I love what you said. So many times, we take preference, and we try to bind people with our preference.
Speaker 1:We are not binding people that you have to have a building that looks like Keystone. But also, I wouldn't want to be bound to say that the only way to do church is in a house. Back to why we build buildings. I do want to talk about the temple. God not only said, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and govern it, He not only has a vision of our future, and it includes architecture, but God had a way He wanted to be worshiped, starting with the tabernacle, but I want to move forward to the temple.
Speaker 1:When he gave instructions for how the temple was to be built, the temple, it wasn't the most cost effective building on planet earth. I actually did a little bit of, and this is loose, and this is, it's very hard to know what the true cost of the temple would be in today's denominations, but if you were to just take the gold that is overlaid into all the walls and all the doors and all the, everywhere, if you were to just take the materials that were used, and you were to basically take the square footage, and you were to dole it out, the temple in today's money would be probably somewhere around $40,000,000,000
Speaker 2:Construction fees.
Speaker 1:Construction, and if you take elsewhere in scripture where it talks about all that was given for the temple, when you counted up what David gave, when you count up what the people gave and what they brought, some estimates have soared even higher, and I don't know if this is true, but some people say like half $1,000,000,000,000 worth of stuff was given for the temple.
Speaker 2:That's quite a building campaign
Speaker 1:by That's quite a building campaign. Okay, the most expensive building in the world right now is about $15,000,000,000 It's in Saudi Arabia. So, the temple that housed the manifested presence of God on earth was a very expensive building. I am not arguing that we need to have that level of ornate building, but what I am saying is that when God built, he didn't build something the cheapest it could be built. When God built, he didn't build something the weakest it could be built.
Speaker 1:He didn't build something the ugliest it could be built. He didn't make it this minimal, lowest price per square foot. When God built something, it was built well, it was built beautifully. And I'm not saying we need to have billion dollar buildings, but what I am saying is you're not wrong if within your budget you wanna build something that's beautiful. And here I wanna shift into even the conversation, one of the big bullets is, why do we have the LED walls?
Speaker 1:Why do we have the sound systems? Why do we have the instruments? And the critique is, the church is trying to mimic the world, and it's a show. It's Vegas, it's Bieber on tour, it's all those things. And I would say, if that's your heart, to mimic the world, if you're trying to mimic Vegas, if you're trying to mimic Taylor Swift concert, if you're trying to mimic those things, yeah, there's a lot of room to criticize.
Speaker 1:But I know for us, in our heart, that is not our heart. We love technology, and we love those LED walls, and we love the lights, and we love it. But you know what? We don't need it. We had one service where all the lights went out, and it was one of my favorite services.
Speaker 1:You wanna know why? Because it was a test of our faith. It was a test of our worship. We had a power outage, and we're in a room where that means we are in 100% darkness until the emergency lights came on. It was in the middle of a song, and you know what our people did?
Speaker 1:Do you remember?
Speaker 2:Sang loud.
Speaker 1:We sang with all of our hearts. And we posted that on social media, and it was one of our biggest, most viral posts that we've ever posted. And the reason is, what you saw was when the technology failed, our heart was still there. And for this pastor, for me, it showed that all the teaching we've done actually took. That it took root.
Speaker 1:That we have all these things, but we don't need it. If our building were to be gone tomorrow, we don't need the building. If the lights were to go out tomorrow, we don't need the lights. If amplification for instruments was gone tomorrow, we'll pick up an acoustic instrument. We don't need it.
Speaker 1:If we don't have instruments, we'll sing with our voice. You don't need it. And so the gospel doesn't need beautiful buildings, doesn't need technology, and the gospel doesn't need sound systems, and the gospel doesn't need LED walls, and the gospel doesn't need all of these things. I agree, it doesn't need it. Jesus said, if you won't do it, the rocks will cry out.
Speaker 1:Jesus doesn't need us. He doesn't need Brandon. True. He doesn't need Susan. He doesn't need Keystone.
Speaker 1:He doesn't need any of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he said, If you don't praise me, the rocks will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he doesn't need us. But what if we wanted to play music that honored and glorified God? What if, when we were dreaming of a building within the budget that we could do, what if we said, I want it to please God. I want the work of my hands to please God. We teach people that when they go to work on Monday, let your work be as unto the Lord.
Speaker 1:Right. As Luther said, if you, I think he's, and I don't have this in notes or anything, but if you're a cobbler, make shoes to the glory of God. Putting together those shoes, that's an act of worship. So when we went and we approached how to build Keystone, we said, how can we make it beautiful? Why?
Speaker 1:Because we want to honor the Lord.
Speaker 2:Well, and you're hitting on something that's so core, and it goes beyond this topic, but it applies to this topic, and that is God is after our hearts. He always has been. He wants to see our hearts. And for the person who has almost that mindset of lack, and they would look at the buildings or they would look at the church. And rather than celebrate different preferences, they criticize it.
Speaker 2:To that person, God would say, you know, you could sacrifice everything. You could you could be so strict with your body and so harsh on yourself and fast and do all these things. But if there's no love inside your heart, it's for nothing. If there's no love of God and a desire for God and a purity of of devotion to God, all the self restraint, all the going without, all the lack, it's not bringing a sacrifice that's pleasing to the Lord. Because the sacrifice pleasing to the Lord is a heart that says, I love you.
Speaker 2:Here's my expression of my love. So it always goes back to motive. What's the motive of the house church? What's the motive of the big building in a different church?
Speaker 1:There's something about architecture that's written into our spiritual DNA, and I prove it to you. Where you have people, people, you said this, build homes. Every single civilization, wherever you find them, they have crafted for themselves shelter, homes, and as a civilization progresses, and I would call that dominion, as it is fruitful and multiplies, even though we have the brokenness of sin, as a civilization progresses, what happens with it? Buildings get more sophisticated. Buildings get more beautiful.
Speaker 1:Buildings progress as well. If you are, I love how you said this a moment ago, I wanna revisit If you are in a house church, again, we celebrate that. If you are in a house church, you are in a house, and that house is architecture. Okay? And somebody paid for that house for you to worship there.
Speaker 1:I would just caution us that God looked at David, or maybe David looked at, okay, I'm a little fuzzy on this. Did David look at God, or did God look at David? I wonder, I think it was David said, I have a palace for me, and I don't have a house for you.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:that's not to say we need to build the temple every time over and over again, but the heart there, I think, needs to be replicated. I think there's theology that
Speaker 2:Deep theology.
Speaker 1:And the deep theology is, I may have bass boats, for me. I may have side by sides, for me. I may have a collection of guns to hunt with, For me, I may have a beautiful home. For me, I may have a golf membership. For me, and if my posture is what's the least I can give to the Lord, If my posture is deep cynicism on a building campaign, man, I just would caution your heart.
Speaker 1:I would caution your heart. I think that we need to do a serious heart check on where money goes. The other thing is that really there is a little bit of a relativism to money when it comes to the Lord. What I mean by that is this, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. We've said that over and over again.
Speaker 1:And in my own life, and in our journey with the Lord, there's so many miracles that happen that happen whenever we're building buildings, whether that was from the house to the school, from the school to a furniture store, from the furniture store to the campus that we are now, and I'm believing in the future what we do next. It is paved with miracle after miracle after miracle. It is paved with prayer after prayer after prayer, and it's paved with devotion. It a biblical principle that before he even looks at what you bring, he's looking at the heart? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if the house is built with the right heart, if the church building is built with the right heart, God is the one who judges that heart. It is the spiritual leadership's imperative. It is our mandate that we anchor the church with the right heart. That's why we've always said this isn't a monument to man. This is a place where we will worship the Lord.
Speaker 2:You know, all of this truth that you're sharing, I mean, it hits very personal for me because I will say right here, right now, I only have one testimony. It's my testimony. You can't rewrite your own testimony. And my testimony happened in the altar of church. There were multiple moments when I was that young college student, and I was coming out of chains, and I was coming out of addiction to food and and struggling in relationships and at a at my darkest place where I found myself in a church in a building.
Speaker 2:One was in Waco. Another one was when in Fort Worth, multiple buildings in Dallas, Fort Worth, all over. And I would find myself in the altar, and someone would be anointing me with oil and praying freedom over me. I find myself in another church, and I'm going down to the altar, and someone's praying over me. And I can point to those milestone moments where God met me in that altar of that church and changed my life.
Speaker 2:And I thank God for the local church. And at that season of my life, I wasn't tithing. I wasn't giving. I was barely holding on by a string. And God met me in the local church.
Speaker 2:And so I am passionate because we see people, their lives changed in the altar. We see people. Some people shoot bullets at the altar. They say, oh, the altar's
Speaker 1:not It's manipulation.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know They say,
Speaker 1:oh, you're manipulating.
Speaker 2:Or you're not doing everything that needs to be done. You know what? God is very well equipped of healing his people any way he wants to. He can do it in an instant or in my story, he can do it over time with milestone moments along the way. However, god wants to heal his soul, he will.
Speaker 2:But over and over again, god partners with the local church. And so whatever that bride, however she comes, whatever packaging she puts on, whatever bridal outfit she's wearing, we wanna celebrate the bride of Christ, and we wanna praise God for his movement in the local church because thousands upon thousands upon millions of lives have testimonies like mine where God met them through the bride of Christ, and it was it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Quickly, I wanna I wanna share also that let's go back to that Acts chapter two. Okay. Hey. When when we see the first century church, not even first century, first breath of the first church in Acts chapter two, you begin to see what are they doing.
Speaker 1:They're gathering in homes, all right? So, what do we know historically about what happened with the local church? Deep persecution, meeting in homes. We see that in the persecuted church today, that they'll meet wherever they can. The most private place, the safest place often is a home.
Speaker 1:But what do we learn from churches? If you're a student of church architecture, and I'm kinda geeky about this kind of thing, I love it. That's why, or when, when we build other campuses, they have to be cool. They have to be beautiful. They have to have something that honors the Lord.
Speaker 1:Right? They probably won't look like our current campus, but they're gonna look like something really wonderful that meshes with the community and is a visual gift to the community. By the way, that's another part, is we wanted to be a good witness. The church can be a physical good witness, but okay, let's go back to Acts chapter two. The first thing they would do, they would meet in small homes, and then the next thing they would do is they would meet in wealthy homes.
Speaker 1:They would meet in wealthy homes because the wealthy homes had a courtyard where more people could gather. Those wealthy homes, you could sometimes get a 100, maybe even more people in those homes to gather. They would gather and they would gather, and some of the buildings, the church buildings, the oldest church buildings, they've done some work on digging around them and what was, and those church buildings, some of our oldest church buildings, were built on, guess what, wealthy homes. They took those wealthy homes, and they said, let's build a church building here.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Around March, around in the March, when Constantine eased the persecution for Christianity, what's the first thing they did? They began to go up. They began to build building after building after building after building. And so, it's in our nature to build. It did start in homes, but then they went to larger homes.
Speaker 1:Those larger homes became places of worship, and then they began to rush. I would say it's very much like our story. We started in our home, then we went to a school, then we went to a furniture store. That furniture store was a furniture store, but we made it into a church. When we could, we built a church from the ground up in a way that worked the way we wanted to worship.
Speaker 1:And so there's also, when they built their churches, they were deeply theological. They were pointed a certain way. They were constructed a certain way. And by the way, where did Jesus preach and teach whenever he was walking? He went to the synagogues.
Speaker 1:Where did the first Christians gather? Yes, they met in homes, but where else did they gather? At the temple courts. They went back to the place to share the name of Jesus. So there's place all over the word of God.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. There's no question. There's no question how God has been moving through the church for thousands, all of these years, and it's it's been through buildings. He's been inside those buildings. He's been reaching people with those buildings and those gathering spaces to reach in at the lost and to save souls.
Speaker 2:You know, I think as you were sharing that, I'd love to talk for a moment about just how we listening to this conversation, how we having this conversation can identify the warnings of the heart that would want to shoot the bullets at God's bride and just the the care that we need to take. And there's some patterns of human behavior that really never stop, and they translate to a million different, you know, subjects and this being the subject that we're talking about now. But patterns of the human heart is we gravitate towards comfort. And I believe sometimes, if not careful, because we are people who want our comfort. And it may be more comfortable to be in a small setting that we for no more, but we wanna call ourselves a church, where really it's about the comfort of my surroundings.
Speaker 2:This isn't stretching me. This isn't hard. But also another pattern of human behavior is control. I wanna control. I wanna control my life.
Speaker 2:I wanna control how I do things. I wanna do what I want to do. All of these things can play a role in the motives of our heart, and and then we can really build ourselves up to have this pious position as we critique.
Speaker 1:Baptize our issues.
Speaker 2:Yes. We baptize our issues and try to clothe it in piety.
Speaker 1:Baptize control.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Baptize preference.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Baptize retreat. Yes. Let me add that one to the list. You're in retreat. You're a Christian in retreat.
Speaker 1:You don't want to advance.
Speaker 2:We lost our mission.
Speaker 1:I don't want a pastor telling me we're starting another campus. I don't want a church, I don't want to be a part of a church that's building a building. I don't wanna be a part of a church that's breaking ground on a new parking lot. What you're really saying is, I don't wanna be a part of a growing church.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And what you're really saying is, I wanna be a part of the church and retreat.
Speaker 2:It could even be a pattern of resentment. I was hurt and I'm resentful, and so I'm not doing that again. I'm gonna I'm gonna do this on my terms. I'm gonna rewrite this on my terms and try to justify it by twisting scripture.
Speaker 1:You're taking the wrong lessons
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:From your pain.
Speaker 2:Yes. Wow. Rather than allowing the Lord to heal us and to be able to love God's bride even when she's been dirty in the past. Is that not true with our children? I mean, if our children have broken our hearts, do we stop loving them?
Speaker 2:If you're in a marriage and you disappoint one another and and there's struggle, marriage marriage is a choice of love and it's hard work. But, when you stick with it and you do it God's way, the beauty that comes from that relationship as you love that other imperfect person because you both are imperfect. God's bride, this side of heaven, we are imperfect. The church is is can be rough because it's a bunch of sinful people prayerfully seeking a good, good God that makes us better.
Speaker 1:And there's two angles to the rough. There's the leadership that can be rough to the sheep
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the sheep who can be rough to the shepherds.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's rough all the way
Speaker 1:So it's rough all the way around.
Speaker 2:But we don't stop loving God's church. We don't give up on her. We don't give up on her, and we don't give up on the mission God has called us to on this earth. If you're breathing, you're on mission. And there's no more powerful way to be on mission than linking arms with God's local
Speaker 1:And on mission means, listen, every Christ follower needs to be on mission in a local church. It is not enough. It is not enough for you to support a charitable organization on the side. It is not enough for you to fund global missions. That's great, but I'm talking about you living your life.
Speaker 1:You have got to be, and it could be a small church, it could be a big church, it could be a hand raising church, it could be a more traditional church. I'm not talking about style at all, But here's the deal. Is your church, are you going to that church for control? I love it. That's bad fruit, control.
Speaker 1:I want to do it my way, preference. What else did you say? It's control, it's comfort. Comfort. I'm going for my comfort, I don't want to be challenged.
Speaker 1:I'm in retreat from the mission because I'm tired, or I was a part of a church that was on mission and it disappointed me.
Speaker 2:I resent both.
Speaker 1:And I'm resenting, and so I want to go to a church that doesn't challenge me. All of these are bad, bad signs. I don't want leadership in my life. That's, and so what do you do? You gravitate toward rebellion, or you gravitate toward people that are just yes people.
Speaker 1:All of this is bad fruit, it's bad fruit. And so if you've had a bad church experience, or if you're just tired, or whatever, don't gravitate toward those bad patterns. Embrace leadership in your life, embrace a church that's growing in your life, embrace a church that challenges you. Man, your life is so short, need to be a part of the bride that is on the move.
Speaker 2:Well, and the the benefits, and, you know, I know we could talk about these things forever, but the benefits of the bride are so endless. I think about right now our student ministry, and the student ministries all over the globe and all over America that are thriving, those that are, that are thriving. I know as a mom, you know, yes, we are church leaders, but we are also parents. And when I have on my mom hat, I'm a mom to four children, and now they're adults. But when they were young, what a gift to me as a mom to know that they had a space to go, that had a different voice than my voice, where they could have community with people in their same age of life, going through the same similar challenges as those school age kids, and that they were being taught of Jesus, and they were being experiencing true worship of praising God and and knowing him and all four being baptized, all four of our kids being baptized in the local church.
Speaker 2:As a mom, what a blessing that there was a place to go. What a blessing that I had somewhere to take my children and for them to encounter God. Yes. They encounter God in our family. Yes.
Speaker 2:We talked about the Lord on the regular. Yes. Everything we did was through the filter of of God's word in our heart to to honor him in our home. However, to have that community of believers, it's like a powerhouse that helps you in a world that's so brutal.
Speaker 1:So true. And as you think about just all that, going back to also the art of it, the LED walls, the music, I said, you don't need it, right? And that's true. The gospel doesn't need it, but why do we do it? We do it because it's the paintbrush of today.
Speaker 1:We do it because it's the stained glass of today. We do it at Keystone. We do it to honor the Lord. We do it because the culture should not have the copyright on creativity. We do it because Broadway should not have a copyright on beauty.
Speaker 1:We do it because museums should not be the only place that inspire you with its beauty. We do it because the best singers should not just be singing in a bar on a Saturday night, they should be leading worship on a Sunday morning. God has given us music. Let's play it in the church. God has given us beauty.
Speaker 1:Let's create it in the church. And so all of these things, really, we're just trying to please the Lord. And we've done it low tech, we've done it high-tech. We've done it big church, we've done it in little church. Our first sound system was a little jam, we call it jam box, boom box, whatever, and God honored it.
Speaker 2:Yes, he did.
Speaker 1:And God was there. I think at the end of the day, caution, caution, tearing down the bride that is fruitful. I wanna caution you that in order to build a vision that God may have given you, you don't tear down a vision that God gave someone else. We need to all be moving toward the visions that God has given us, and men, go where the spirit of God is. And today, I see God moving in mighty ways in wonderful buildings that exalt the Lord with beauty and with the technology we have in our hands.
Speaker 1:So, let's just all get along.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Our heart is just to equip you, truly, to have this conversation. We're passionate about it. But to equip us that when we hear the critics, that first of all, we check our own heart. Am I a person with a critical spirit? Do I run around looking for the the weaknesses and the flaws in others or in God's church?
Speaker 2:Or am I a person that says, God, I'm gonna trust you with the God's church, and I'm gonna honor your bride, and I wanna be a part of your growing, thriving mission on earth that you're doing through the local church? And God, I trust you to work out all those details.
Speaker 1:Love that spirit, and then I would say, ask yourself, what am I building? Like, am I just tearing down? What am I building? What am I advancing? And can I advance something while they do their thing?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna do my thing. Or do you have to tear it down? And then I would just check all those things we said. Do you have bad fruit as you're moving forward where you're headed? I hope that we've equipped you for your own cynical heart.
Speaker 1:I hope that we've given you some answers of, Oh, that's why we do that. Okay, that helps me. And I hope that we've helped you with someone that may have stumbled into the pit of cynicism themselves. Maybe you could have some responses with a sweet heart, and a sweet tone, and a sweet voice. You may have something that you could say back, say, hey, have you thought of it this way?
Speaker 1:But God's bride is beautiful, it is growing, and revival is here, and I'm proud to say we're a part of it. That's right. God bless you. Thank you. Sign us off, Susan.
Speaker 2:Yes. Thanks so much for joining the conversation. We can't wait to meet with you again on The Overflow.