Granger Smith PodcastWelcome back to the podcast!
On this episode, Granger welcomes back Marshall. They’ll discuss what makes a church truly great and how to identify a good one—or a not-so-good one. They recount stories from their experiences, including the joy of meeting individuals who traveled to attend their service and the significance of being part of a strong church community.
Got questions? Email podcast@grangersmith.com and let’s keep the conversation going!
All right, welcome to the podcast. Got my buddy Marshall repeat guests over and over. Yeah, and every once in a while Marshall's one of our pastors at a Mayas and Georgetown and everyone saw people that hear this podcast actually show up.
Yeah, it's been cool to meet some of those people and have conversations with what the Lord's doing in their life. It's been really encouraging.
Yeah, it is. It really is. And so sometimes people will going to visit in laws or whatever they're doing that they kind of make a little effort on a Sunday to come through and see it at a mais.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's always a good feeling.
Yeah, especially after service when they say they were encouraged by it all and then it wasn't weird or anything. It's always helpful. Yeah. Yeah, it's been really cool hearing those stories though.
Yeah, So if you're one of those people that have done that, just know that it encourages me. There were actually there was a couple last Sunday. I'm assuming you spoke with them.
Oh I didn't. Another member told me about it, but I didn't get a chance to talk to them.
So that member that you're talking about she was like, hey, don't I don't want to bother you. But these people came and they heard the podcast, and I was like, that's never bothered me. Yeah, I'll wait all day just to hear that.
Yeah.
So to those people that told you, hey, I hope it's not weird, man, it's it's it's really encouraging.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, especially when people were coming. So we had a couple weeks ago some family members that flew into San Antonio actually to business and family and drove up just come check out the church.
It's a long drive.
It is a long drive, but they had friends in Georgetown, so they got to hang out with some friends too. But it was just an encouraging to get to meet them and hear a little bit about their story and encourage them on their way.
So yeah, so I think that that kind of we're going to get into the questions and that's what we do here. If you have a question, email me podcast at grangersmith dot com. But before we get into our first question, I think that kind of brings up a good point that if people are traveling to Amais said they hear us on here, they want to come to Georgetown. That's great, But what we really what's even more encouraging, is that they find a good church in their own hometown, their own city. And I'm assuming most people, most people that would listen to this podcast and call themselves a Christian, have something that they consider to be a home church or a local church, or the church that they go to on Easter or Christmas at least. So let's talk about what makes a good church. And if someone is listening, thing perhaps in thinking I'm not quite sure if my church is good or not, or I would like to look for a church, but I don't really know where to start. I don't know what to look for, what to look for. I think it would be helpful if you and I got on this podcast and over several episodes we answer questions like we normally do, and we don't have to be consistent about it. We could just lay it out of the next six months or whatever. But every once in a while when you come in, we'll give a small aspect about what to look for in a good church, or also in the same way to how to identify a bad church. There's nuance to all of this, and there would be things that would instantly identify a church that you should leave immediately. There would be those things, and we can get into those things. But here's something I wanted to bring up because in all of my travels, as I go and speak at some of these churches, things that I see there is a there is one nuance that I have a lot, a lot of close friends do that I personally am am convicted against doing, and that is having multiple services on a Sunday. Multiple Let me let me refrain, rephrase that, multiple identical services, meaning you're you're repeating the same exact service two, three, four, five, even six times on a Sunday. And I know that a lot of people listening right now attend a church that does that, and that's just because of this year number of churches that do it. I've attended a church like that. I'm sure you have. I've I've spoken to many of those, and I know that you've probably spoken at some of those church as well. So what could we say to people that are considering a church, or or looking at their own church and wondering what makes a healthy church and they're in a church that has multiple services? Where do we start with that?
Yeah? Well, first we start with it's not a gospel issue. So it's not one of those things that if your if your church has the church you go to has multiple services, you should leave today. Don't go back, but look back. That's right question you need to ask.
That's why I said that there are things that you would identify and go we need to leave right away, and this is not one.
Of them, right, But it is something to think through, but something to think through. So really you can think about it in multiple ways. Is so a minute ago you said identical services. So I'll hit on the ones that have different services first because I think it's a little bit easier to talk about if the if a church has multiple services where the services look different. The sermons might be the same, but you might have a different style of music. You might have a certain type of dress, a tire is appropriate for this service, and then a certain dress attires appropriate for this service, and don't ever mix those up. The danger there is you're feeding into consumerism. So church now becomes what do you want out of church and what fits you most, and not what is the Bible? Say churches, because it's really at the core with this question is is what is the church? Because that will dictate how you think through services, how you think through preaching, how you think through your responsibility as a church member. All those things play into whether or not multiple services is good and helpful. Doesn't mean they're evil, but again things you want to think through, and so I would discourage any church from doing multiple services where they have different versions. Most common I think is you have a service that's traditional and then you have a service that's contemporary. Again, you're you're dividing the church based on preferences at that point, Well, this group over here prefers this type of music, prefers this kind of feel in the service. This group prefers this type of feel and this type of look and this type of music. So you're really pushing in on people. Your preferences are what matter most here, not what the Bible says we should be doing together. Because if you look in scripture, specifically the New Testament, every time it's talking about the church is talking about this gathering of people together. There's no differentiation of well, this group means at this time to do this. This group at this time means to do this, and that mean the word itself, right, ecclesia clesia means assembly. So there's this understanding that these groups of people are meeting together, assembling together to worship the Lord. And so you want to have this understanding of Sunday service is not about me going there for myself. Me attending Sunday service, yes, benefits me spiritually. I'm getting fed spirit by the word. I'm communing with my other brothers and sisters in Christ. But also me gathering on Sunday is for the benefit of brothers and sisters in Christ. So therefore I need to know my brothers and sisters in Christ that I've covenanted with through membership. And so this is why membership plays role in it. Because if I think, if my thought is well, membership just means that I'm connected to this church somehow, then it doesn't really matter how many services the church has, because I have no responsibility. So what is the responsibility of the members? Why be a member of a church? And we would argue you're a member of a church because you are agreeing with other people, you're covenanting with them. I want to be held accountable by you, and I want to hold you accountable to your walking with Christ. And so that's the mutual agreement. We are making with one another. I need to know you. And if You're going to a ten thirty service and I'm going to a nine am service and we never worshiped together, then it's going to be really hard to do that. I remember in college I went to a church that had three services on Sunday morning, two on Sunday night, and one on Saturday night, and eventually had two on Saturday night. And I would meet people out in the city and find out they were members of the same church of me, and I'd never seen them, and I was going there for at that point a year and a half, and so it was just insane to me that I was meeting person after personally like, oh, yeah, I'm a member of that church too, and I'm thinking, I've literally never even seen you before, not that I just don't know your name or I don't know how long you've been I just I literally have never seen you, and we claim to be members of the same church. Like that. That's a problem, I think because of what Scripture calls us to do as members of churches.
So let's talk about the different kinds of multiple services. And I think you hit on two of them. One of them is the identical services. You're just recreating the same exact thing with the same worship songs, the same room, the same building, the same pastor the same message. You're just replicating it over and over, and we would call that wrong for the reasons you just named. There are churches I go and speak at and I will tell them this. So this is not like I'm this not a secret that I'm just revealing on the podcast. I will tell the pastors when I go, and I don't give them like a fierce rebuke. I just say, would you at home, tell your family that we're going to split the family and some of the family's going to eat at six o'clock and some of the family's going to eat at six forty five, and we're going to make the same meal. Now everyone would say no, that's that would be weird. So that would be the identical services. And then the different service is that are modern. Some people call it contemporary, some people call it the other one traditional or classic. I've heard the name classic. So that's the same thing that's splitting the different styles of people. As the grandparents eat at six o'clock and then the kids eat at six forty five, it does the same thing. And really what that is that's legitimately two churches. It's two churches. But here's a nuance when I think multiple services is okay, and it's when you have a Sunday evening that's the same people that came Sunday morning, you're coming Sunday evening and it's a different message, a different style. Maybe it's more of a prayer night. Maybe you have a shorter sermon on something else, an opportunity for different people to engage in different ways, different songs, but it's the same people. It's the same family. That means the family had breakfast together. Now the family's having dinner together. But it's the same family in the same room. So these are things that I think that that's a way that you could have multiple services and it's okay. So don't hear me in that way, but tell me about why if you have a church that is that maybe we should go back, because people are already thinking, well, our church is its just busting at the seams. There's no there's no more room, there's no other way to do this but have three services and we might have to move to four. But there's there's an easy solution to this, and I shouldn't say an easy solution, but there is a practical solution to this. There's a biblical solution to this, and so let's talk about that.
A little bit. Yeah, so I think you're talking about church planting, yes, right, like, because that I get the argument. You know, there's just a time that we're running out of seats. What are we going to do? I mean, in some sense we're kind of facing that problem right now our church of what are we going to do because it's getting harder to have as many people in the room. So I'll preface this by saying, also my personal conviction on it is, while I'm convictionally against multiple services, there could be a season where a church needs to go to multiple services in order to buy time for something else. And by season I means something short, you know, six to twelve months. I have a buddy right now who's at their church. They literally they had put every single chair they could fit in their meeting space in there, and then there was some standing room only in the back. They have gone to two services with a time limit of eight months on it. So they're giving themselves eight months to either find a new space or figure out a way to add to their current building. But eight months they're stopping it and potentially we'll plant a church out of it if they can't figure out the space.
So before we go to church planning or finding a new building, let me add on to that as well, because I was going to go here too. But Chad, who Chad's on this podcast multiple times, he was sent out and took a senior pastor role in Montana. They had three services, So I'm going to preach for him in October and it's two on Sunday. So we all have Chad this podcast. We love Chad so and that's also what I'm trying to say too, is that this is we're not trying to speak out against any of our friends. We're just saying for people that are looking for a church, what could be encouraging to you. Chad came in and immediately he said, I'm going to work towards getting rid of the Saturday night service first. So it took one step at a time as he took over a very old church that's been doing things for a lot of years the same way. First, his first really goal was I'm going to get rid of the Saturday service and move us to Sunday. Once we get just to Sunday, I'm going to try to get us to one service. But that's something he's working toward and that's the goal. So that's that's one nuance when like, similar to what you said.
Yeah, and to that point, most of the churches that I've engaged with that have multiple services, let's say they have three, they really could do with just two.
Yes, right, I said.
So some of the motive behind it too is well, if we have extra space, meaning another service where there's more seats, we can we can still grow faster, or we have room for growth, you could say that. But to back to the point of church planting, that's the normal pattern of when the church gets too big. Now that that's not to say a church can't get us a bigger space, because so when we talk about this in our membership process, when people are joining the church, they see the room's getting pretty packed. What's y'all's plan. So this is where we get to talk about how we don't plan to have multiple services. That's we're trying to prevent that, but that we could potentially add onto the building or get a different building or something like that. And so the next follow up question is always, well, how big is too big? When do you cut it off and say we're not growing this space anymore, We're we're straight planting. And I think that question is answered differently based on philosophies and personalities. So for me or for us as elders of our church, too big would be when we can't act adequately care for the members that the Lord has put underneath us, that is entrusted to us, because you know Hebrews thirteen, we have to give an account for every soul that has covenanted at that church.
And so, which I think is a different talk too. I think we could do an entire podcast on just that subject as well.
Yeah, and so because of texts like that, and then even Acts twenty where Paul's writing to the Ephesian elders about how they're supposed to care for all the flock, all of the flock among them, he's using language of your members, know you, you know your members, and you're caring for each of them. And so for us, too big would be when we as elders go, there's no way we can care for all these people. There's no way for us to know them. They don't know us, and there's just no way we can adequately adequately care for their soul, of which we have to give an account to the Lord for we're too big. We're getting too big, So let's plant people out. And planting is hard man, not even logistically. I mean, we plant it out of the church we were in. But it's hard because the way we understand church planting is it's not just sending out two guys and saying, hey, we bless you in your church planting process. Hope it goes well. Let us know if you need any advice or anything. Praise the Lord. Look, we've planted a church. We sent these two guys out. That could be done. That's not sinful to do it that way. But what we would love is to be able to send a couple elders out with thirty to sixty people at least and send money with them and help them find a place and send you know, speakers or MIC's, whatever we can to encourage them and do whatever we could to show we really want this thing to succeed if the Lord wills, and so that means you're giving up a lot of good members you're giving up money, you're you're you're taking a hit membership wise. But the church and the leadership have to be okay with that because it's not about building our name. So I mean, you say the church name on here. I don't really care if people know who our church is. As long as we are doing faithful gospel work where the gospel is spreading and we are doing Kingdom advancement work. That's what I care about. And so if if and I've heard the argument before, what if people just like the preaching here, and so if you plant something out like they're really kind of sacrificing your preaching, I think that's I think that's a bad thing. I think that's a bad argue. You're building it around potentially one man in his speaking ability. What happens when he retires, What happens if he dies in a plane accident or car crash or God forbid, he as a moral failing has to get out of ministry. Now the church is what do we do? We've built around this guy, And so there's other stuff you can do to kind of help the congregation not feel that way about a specific things that we've tried to put in place, So it's not built around me. But if the idea going in is we want to plant other churches because we know the Lord will grow stuff. We grow churches. That's what the Lord does. And it's not about making our name big. It's not about being the biggest church in town. We want to send people out to the communities in which they live. And so if people are driving forty five minutes to come to our church regularly, that's not like a win for us. It's not like wow, look at using people are willing to drive forty five minutes to come to us. Our goals to plant a church in that area so they can be gathering in their community, worshiping together and serving their community in tangible needs and with the Gospel and not having to drive forty five minutes to meet on a Sunday morning with with brothers and sisters in Christ. And so we want to equip people to go out and do that. So we see in Scripture, I mean, you see Paul just encouraging the planting of churches. Paul tells Titus this and Crete says, you know what we left, what was left disorganized? Organize it. And he's taught, he's telling him start churches. He's not telling him to start a single church. He's saying start churches and get elders in those churches and help help those churches get started in a place where there are no churches. And so that's something we want to see as churches giving of themselves for Kingdom advancement, not building themselves up. And so it does tie back to things like you know, you asked how as if I'm thinking about finding a church, what are some things that I want in a church. You want a church where you have access to your pastors. It's a super discouraging thing to me when people come to our church and visit and it's just a shock to them that they have the ability to talk to me after service because I'm standing in the in the four year and the at room, whatever you want to call it, after service just talking to people. They're like, I've been a member at my church for seven eight years and I've not once had a conversation with our pastor. And that's not an attack against that guy. I think there's some situations where the church just get so big it's really hard to do that.
And not only meeting in the in the four year after but coming to you and saying I need to speak with the pastor this week.
Yeah. Yeah, And so all of our pastors, every member has every pastor's contact info. If somebody reaches out for counseling or for a meeting with one of the pastors, we do whatever we can to make that meeting happen within about a week. Most of the time it's within a couple days, depending on how urgent it is. But there is the sense again Paul writing in Acts twenty to the Ephesian elders and then Hebrews thirteen of you need to know the sheep among you. And so if you're at a place where you're looking at churches and you get somewhere and it's like, man, there's no way I'll ever know these pastors, and then they'll never really know me. I think that's discouraging and should be concerning.
It would be it's just with the analogy of sheep and the pasture, which a pastor literally means shepherd. So to think of a pasture with too many sheep and not enough shepherds, what would you do in that situation? You would either split the pastures and send sheep out, or you would get more shepherds into the current pasture so that every sheep is accounted for. So if one's lost, you know it. If one is sick, you know it. If one needs fed, you know it. If one gets out of the fence, you know it.
Yeah, because you want to know how they're doing spiritually. You want to know how their souls are. That's what you're giving an account to the Lord for as elders as pastors is and I'm using elder and pastor interchangeably there, but that's what you're doing as a pastor is you are caring for the souls of the people that you're over. So it's not even usually need to be in a place where the elder knows your name. You need to be in a place where the elder knows you, where your elders, your pastors know you. That doesn't mean every pastor has to be your best friend or has to be best friends with every member, but it would be extremely discouraging if somebody came up to me and I said, hey, it's great to see. Is this your first time here and they said, and they would say, I've actually been a member for about eight months now. That would be incredibly discouraging. To me, I would be failing at my job as a pastor if that ever happened.
So, if you're in a church right now with a video screen, watching a pastor on a video screen, I think this conversation kind of speaks for itself though, that would be extremely discouraging. Yeah, and probably dangerous for you and your family.
Yeah. So for me, this whole discussion is less about multiple services and more about do you understand what the church is? Do you understand membership, do you understand what the role of a pastor is, and do you understand what preaching is? So Martin Lloyd Jones, dead guy, amazing preacher.
He's in the hallway on the way.
Yeah, he's got a picture of walking up the hallway. He would talk about something what he called the preaching moment. Now, his argument for that was why sermons shouldn't be recorded or they shouldn't be written down and saved. But I think what he is arguing there has implications for this because his point in the preaching moment is the Lord is doing something in that moment of preaching between the preacher and the congregation to whom he's preaching, And so there is something he's not just he's not written a sermon and going all right, I'm just going to deliver this now, and whoever hears it hears it. He's the Lord is using that specific pastor, over his specific congregation to feed their souls with this word that the Lord has equipped him with from the Bible. And so there's something happening in that preaching moment. And so if you say, well, we got four services, now you have four different preaching moments, because that guy will not deliver the sermon the exact same way every single time, and if he is, it's more of a performance at that point, right, And so he's doing something in there, and that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. The Lord can use different can use each four of those to speak to the people listening. The problem with that is is now you're getting a different message than the person at the ten thirty service. You're getting a different message in the person at the twelve o'clock service. Yes, you might be getting the same content, but the message is being communicated differently. And you know, with the view of preaching not being a performance, I would discourage people. We've talked about this a little bit you know, when you've gone place and had to preach it multiple services. I think we've talked about this discouraging people from editing the sermon in between services, because what you're trying to do at that point is you're trying to perfect the sermon.
That's definitely happened with me.
This didn't work, So I'm gonna pull that out or oh I thought about this, I'm going to add it in. At that point, one, you're potentially short changing people who decided to come to the earlier services, although they're getting probably the most authentic sermon for the day. But at the same time, the preacher at that point, the pastor at that point is now trying to perfect some sort of message to the people. And I don't think that's how preaching works. You're not trying to perfect a message. You're preaching. You're proclaiming a declarative word to God's people that He has entrusted under your care.
If you want to get a hold of me, go to cameo dot com slash Granger Smith quick way for me to send you a video message, an update, happy birthday, congratulations, send it to someone else, whatever it might be. I just pull out my phone and record something, record a video for whatever you want me to say. Again, that's cameo dot com slash Grangersmith. Okay, So talking about churches with multiple services, and we kind of we went down the aspect of splitting the family. You wouldn't split a family at home. The pastor not being able to care for all the sheep, the shepherd not being able to follow all the sheep in the pasture, the preacher changing potentially some of the message and short changing one of the congregations. I mentioned the video message. I want to make sure that you understand I'm not talking about necessarily the projected image of the pastor. I'm talking about if he's not even there and they're piping in the message on a video, that would be extremely dangerous considering everything we've talked about. And then I want to say that the traditional versus modern and contemporary, I'm extremely convicted against that, and I believe that those would be multiple churches. You might as well just call it that because most likely the people that go to the contemporary service don't even know the people in the traditional and so in that aspect, they're not part of a family at all. I don't even know each other's name, and so I think that's dangerous in multiple ways. I think we talked about a little bit about the nuance of how it could work if a pastor had a vision moving forward, having traditional and contemporary. There's no vision to that. That's just saying, hey, we want to make our church as big as possible. We want to keep as many people happy as we possibly can, because these people want the church oregon or the piano, and these people want the drums, and we want to keep them both happy, and we want young people to keep coming. So we're going to keep both. And that's a greedy mentality. That's a meme mentality based on me and not God's design. And it's really communicating a message that multiplying your services is more important than multiplying churches, and multiplying churches is biblical and multiplying services is not. So you're communicating in some way to your people that growing your own campus and growing your own name is more important than what the Bible says the church really is.
Yeah, and I'll add to one of the dangers behind it is multiple services will lead to bigger churches. Bigger churches are not evil in an other stuff. Now, the danger with it is the bigger the church gets, the greater potential there is for the church to run more like a business instead of being run the way Scripture commands it to. So if you have five thousand members, it's really hard to do some of the things scripture caused the church to do. That's not saying it's impossible. I think it could be done.
Were you on the podcast where we were talking about, well, how many can you have? Were we talking about that, because I think it came about but we're like, maybe, well, if you had a thousand, you're gonna need like fifty elders, sixty elders potentially, yeah, or pastors we should say for people, Yeah, because again it's a lot.
Yeah. And also it depends on personality, right, Like some guys are like, I have the mental capacity and the ability to really know about seventy five people.
Well we did talk about this, right.
Yeah, And some guys will be like, I can know three hundred easy. This is my personality. I'm an extrovert, I'm always with people. I can know three hundred easily. And so if you have this is why plurality of elders is helpful because that'll help dictate how you care for the congregation. But again that's you want to make sure that the pastors know and can care for the congregation and their souls. But you want to avoid the church being run like a business to where the bigger you are, and what I mean by business is the bigger you get, the more pressure you will feel to be the best at what you're doing, and you'll feel the need to hire things like a social media team, a digital graphics team, a project management people, office managers, things, And these are all things I've heard churches have. So it's not like I'm just grabbing these out of nowhere, and you really pull from members being able to serve the church because it's now become a product a business to be the best at what they're doing when and that's training people to say this is what a church needs. A church needs these things when really scripture's pretty clear on what the church needs. That's not to say social media is bad for our church has an Instagram page. We do it. I mean it's not done amazing, but it's done. We put our sermons online, we have a website. So it's not those things are evil, but you start running the church in a way that's really hard for the congregation have any onus and responsibility within the church, because as you've you delegated it out to people you're gonna pay to take care of it.
So yeah, So people listening right now, like I said, I think a lot of people listening probably attend to church with multiple services. I would like you, guys, do me a favor and when I post this, go to the YouTube version. So whatever version you're listening to right now, go to the YouTube version and comment on this video and tell me something that either Marshall and I missed or didn't explain well enough, or something that needs an elaboration, or if you disagree and you want to push back on something we said, that will allow us to sit down here next time and then go through this episode in real time and go look like Sally says that she loves her multiple services and here's why, and then we could we could just talk about it. What we're not doing is we're not accusing any any congregation members or church goers that you're wrong for where you are right now. We're just literally trying to encourage you to be in the best most nourishing, most well fed place that you could be with you and your family. That's the conversation we're trying to have, and it kind of spurs from people coming and either listening to us or visiting and going this is a little different. And we'll say for the tenth time when I say a maus is a little bit different, I'm not saying that we're special or that we are better than everyone else.
I mean we make mistakes.
We make a lot of this.
We're still learning, we grow in it.
But and so I think you would admit, this is not about a maus. This conversation is not This is about all the people that are in their own hometowns listening wherever they're listening to this podcast and thinking about how could I serve my family best in a church body.
Yeah, And because it's not about a mais, we'll have people visit and they'll say, Oh, I say, do you live in Georgetown? Well, no, we live over here. Oh have you checked out this church? Yes, We'll try to encourage them at least check out this other church before you make the commitment to come here. That doesn't mean we tell them they're not allowed to join us, but we just say, have you checked out these other churches that are a little closer to where you live, and they're faithful churches where you'll be poured into and cared for. But then also we do an extended time of prayer in our service every Sunday morning, and we always pray for at least one other church in our area. We'll pray for one other church in our area, and then we pray for another church in the country to encourage people. One if you're in our area and you're closer to this other church, go there. They're a faithful church that you could be attending, some of whom are in Georgetown with us five minute drive down the road, and then some of them are closer to downtown Austin. But then also we've had people where we pray for churches in other parts of the country. Amber's done this. We prayed for a church up near Dallas, and she said, I got a friend or a cousin or somebody, and so I recommend to that church and they visited. So that's what we're doing when we're praying for these churches to help people go, Oh, I know somebody who lives there. That must be a church that I should encourage him to go check out.
We could do that if you comment below your city too, we could also recommend someone that we would encourage you go to in that area if there is one, hopefully there is one. I have one more thing. This is a little bit of homework for you guys listening. I never do this, but I want you to be thinking about this question. What is the goal of the church. We're not going to answer that. I want you to think about it. What is the goal of the church. And I'll tell you one thing that it's not. The goal of the church is not growth. And a lot of times and a lot of people I talked to, I ask them, what's your goal here? And they say to grow? And that is not the goal of a church. It's not what the Bible says. Go therefore and grow churches. Grow one church and make it really big, and make multiple campuses and pipe in all the messages on video. It's not the goal. So be thinking. That's the homework. What is the goal of church? And see see if you could find biblical, something biblical to back that up. And then comment blow on the YouTube page and we'll look at that. We'll read it next time. Should we get to a question or two? We talked a long time about that, but I like to and I think it's important. Uh. This first question comes from Tyler once again. You could email podcast at grangersmith dot com and says, good evening. My name is Tyler. I have a question. How do I raise my newborn to be a godly man? I love my dad, but he is not a godly man. I've been trying to figure this out, but I haven't any advice. Thanks Tyler, Hey, thanks buddy, thank you, thank you for the email. Congratulations on your newborn little boy. What a gift, what a blessing. I'll tell you something. You almost answered your own question in some form because you said, how do I raise this godly man? My dad was not a godly man, and so you're you're making a connection that the father and how he represents an example is important. And so there are a lot of factors on what makes a godly man, but one of those is you being the example of the godliness that he could imitate. And and then the discouraging part is you say, but I've been trying to figure this out, but I haven't. It's okay, you have a lot of you have a lot of time for this newborn. But this is something Tyler, you have to figure out this, This is something that falls on you. You can't look at this newborn and go, Lord, make him godly because this is the this is the airplane. Uh, put the mask on yourself before you help your kid. This is the exact scenario. You have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on your kids. So you seek godliness in yourself and then all that and that'll be a big factor in him understanding what that means. So that this is a this is this is very common kind of question. But how would someone seek to be a godly man? Because Tyler, now I'm speaking to you, not your newborn. What are what are I mean, there's a bunch of ways, but what are what are a few ways that we could just encourage Tyler with?
Yeah, well, I'm a pastor, so to read your Bible, being the word daily. That's good for your own soul, but also that's good for your your sons.
One.
You know, I love making book recommendations, so I know and I know most guys go I don't read. I think every guy out there should be reading, so I'll always give book recommendations. So one, uh, and this one's more almost a pamphlet Thoughts for young Men by J. C Ryle, Dead guy, but really good stuff. And then Thomas Watson wrote a book called a Godly Man's Picture where he just walks through what does a Godly Man look, think, and do? So that one's a little bit longer, but both really helpful, excellent books. Read those, but also Tyler, yep, Tyler, get into a church if you're not already in one, and find godly guys in that church who can pour into you and speak into your life, because that's what's going to give you understanding of how one you could be a better godly man, but two your learning from them things. You can encourage your son as he grows up, and you're able to point to those guys like let's say the Lord allows you to be able to stay in that same church for an extended period of time, and your son, this is nine, ten, eleven, twelve. You're able to tell him, Hey, look to so and so, look to so and so. These are godly guys. Hopefully you're modeling it as well. But you're also able to point him to other godly guys in the church who can model for him walking with Jesus looks like faithfully, and so it's not just on you at that moment, but you're encouraging him to look to other guys, especially specifically older guys, who who are faithfully living out the Christian life and modeling for him and for you what that looks like.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't have much to add to that, Tyler. The same way that you want to model to your newborn, you want you need somebody to model to you, to to kind of redefine what you mean by godly or holy or mature. I think you could wrap that up by saying obedience to Christ. So to learn what it means to be obedient to Christ. You're going to see this first and foremost in the Bible, and then a good, healthy church like we just talked about in the whole first section of this podcast, will take what that Bible is saying and help apply that directly to your life so that you could use what you've learned from the Bible and then and walk in it, and and then having these these older men to help say what's what's going on? What what's your what's your routine look like? What are you reading right now in the Bible? What's your prayer life like?
What you what do you?
What are you praying? What do you need in today? What are you? What are your temptations? What kind of sin battles are you having right now?
What?
What we're what are encouraging things that are happened? But the things that that are preferably an older man. Really it could be anybody, but preferably an older man that says, walk where I walked. I'll show you, and I'll show you where I messed up, and I'll show you where the Lord took me. And it was a good path. And so Tyler, would you're going to need a church and you're going to need a good Bible.
Yeah.
Yeah, And I love I love so many times how a baby is what starts these kind of conversations. It's a it's a great turning point in a man's life when he goes, you know, I've been kind of off the rails. Now I've got this baby. I can't be that man anymore. I need to be better. And that's a that's a good start.
And one thing I'll say Tyler. This won't apply much as with a newborn, but you need you need to impress it, have it impressed on your heart right now, so you're prepared when you need to do it. This isn't guaranteeing a sign of a godly man, but it is one of the markers of a godly man is a guy who's willing to admit when he's wrong and ask forgiveness from his kids. I've been talking to this a lot, to a lot of guys about this recently. It's a very humbling thing to go to your six year old and ask for forgiveness because you handled the situation wrong, or you disciplined out of anger instead of love, or you yelled instead of being gracious and patient kind with your words. But you're teaching them Dad makes mistakes too, and dad needs forgiveness, and in that you're also modeling the forgiveness that you have in christ if you're a Christian. So it's one of the markers I think every guy should should be working on, is the humility to be able to ask forgiveness from your kids when you mess up. I love it.
I'm just finishing up such a good book that I know you've read Marshall, that's when people are big and God is small.
Oh it's a great book.
It's a great book, and I thought I actually went into that book thinking it was going to be more about pride and humility, but it's much more than that. So yeah, recommend that to anyone when people are big and God is small.
Yeah.
Next question comes from Read says hey, mister Smith, my name is Read. I hope you're doing well. I'm fifteen, I'm a sophomore in high school. I a professed believer in my church, and I love showing steers for four ah. My question is, when going through hurdles and ruts in your faith, how have you kept your faith and built your faith even stronger out of the struggle. I know Christ is my Lord and savior, my only hope in life and death, But if you were ever in a spiritual slump, how would you get out of it? Thanks free time, read all. I read, So it's going to be hard not to answer the same way we just answered Tyler. But those those questions are connected, and probably the most common question I get is how do you build your faith? Or when you're in a slump, how do you get out of it. That's actually great for that book when people are big and God is small, because you know what you know. Another book is, I don't know if it's for a fifteen year old maybe it depends on you read. But Dark Clouds Deep Mercies is is really good at understanding how to, how to pray, how to lamit, how to The book talks about how to complain to God, how to have a godly complaint and what this does. And there's a lot of ways to answer your question about how do you build your faith, But one thing it does is when you're in the struggle of it, you know that God is. God doesn't change. God is immovable, but you, emotionally, you're the one changing. So when you feel like when you feel like God is far away, he's not. It's it's this. It's the the false representation of your emotions and your feelings that make you feel like He's far away. And so then you go back and you remind yourself of the truth of who God is. And so you can interchange that word faith with trust. So to grow your trust in someone in anyone in Marshall. For me to trust marshal more, I would need to know him more. Read to I don't know you at all, so I can't really say I have faith in you, Read, But that's just because I.
Don't know you.
But if I learned to know you, my trust would grow in you, and then my faith would grow in you. And so did you know that God has provided a way for us to know Him? And so many times I find that this is some a concept that's not often thought about because we live in a world that's just there's a heightened spirituality where it's like, yeah, I believe. You know, Christ is my savior, my hope and life and death, and we sing about it, and you know we has victory over death and he went to the cross for my sins, and you know I love Jesus. And yet we're lacking in an understanding, a true understanding of who he is as he's revealed himself in sixty six books of the Bible, and not just the popular pop songs that we sing Christian pop songs we sing you sing on Sunday mornings. So read, I want you to think about I want you to think about reading your Bible. And there's a lot of benefits to that, but I want you to think with one focused aim of knowing who God is, learning who he is as he's revealed himself. And as you begin to know who he is and learn who he is, it's amazing how all the outside factors that are putting you in a spiritual slump or your struggles, and I'm assuming you've had them, that's why you asked this question, it's amazing when you stop thinking about that and yourself and look to Him and what he's done and what he has promised and who he is, how your faith starts getting stronger. What do you have to say to this? The disciples ask Jesus the same question.
Yeah, I don't have much to I echo everything Gradeer said if being in the word and praying is not the issue, because I think that's where I would start, right if somebody said that, I feel like God's really distant from me. God doesn't go further a closer way to his people. He's there. We can feel further away because we're not engaging with like we're not reading the Word, we're not praying, we're not gathering with his people. But let's say that's not there. And part of this is I'm going through really difficult times this word. Being in the word's helpful because you can remember the promises of God. But the promises aren't always positive, meaning hey, I'm with you. Some of the promises are and don't forget you're going to have to suffer, like there will be suffering in the Christian life. And so to the point earlier when we're talking about churches, and sometimes there's churches that you need to get out of right now. If the church you're going to is promising you that you shouldn't have to suffer or promising you that you shouldn't be experiencing some of these difficulties if you, if you truly had faith, that's a church you need to leave quickly, because that's not biblical. Jesus himself says that you will have to bear your cross, you will have to, you will have to, you will suffer for my name. And that's and then when we're preaching through Hebrews right now, we just we're in the middle of chapter twelve and it says God loves us, and we know that because he disciplines us, so that there's a promise that he will discipline his children, just like a good father will discipline his children. And we talked about in the Sermon on Sunday that discipline is not just corrective. So it's not like you did something wrong, I have to discipline you. It's more like a coach who will help equip and train you through some hard stuff sometimes. So yeah, sometimes you have to you have to go run laps because you fumbled the ball. But sometimes you just want run windsprins at the end of practice because the coach is trying to build your endurance, not because you did anything wrong. And that's what the Lord is doing. So there are things that we go through in our lives that we've been promised it will be difficult at points. James Chapter one talks about this rejoice in your sufferings counted all joy, my brothers. When you face various trials. It's very odd to say you're going to suffer and you need to rejoice in it. It's because you recognize that I'm going through this stuff because God is sovereign. He's putting it in my life to shape and mold me into the image of Jesus. And so there is a sense where you know, how do I strengthen my faith when things are really rough and difficult. There's really not anything you do. To make that strength, that faith stronger, you lean in on the promises of God, knowing God has promised never to put something in my life that he won't get me through. God has never promised me an easy life. God has never promised me health, wealth and prosperity. He's never promised me that. Because Jesus suffered, I don't have to suffer. What he has promised is you will face things. I will get you through those things, and all of those things are for your benefit. So that gives me greater faith in God. Knowing I have no clue why I'm going through this, I have no clue what the purpose of this is, and it hurts. But I also can lean on the fact that God has promised he will not leave me or forsake me. He will get me through this. He has not left me, and he will get me out of this rut. And so my faith is in Him who has not left me, even though my circumstance may not change.
Yeah, that's good. I hey read. I had a guy come up to me one time at the end of one of my talks, and he talked. He pulled me aside separately, and he said, man, I just feel like my faith is not growing. And I'm reading. You said, you said read in the mornings, and that's what I'm doing, and I just don't feel like anything's changing. And I said, I said, what what do you read on? And he's like, wait what. I said, well, do you have a Bible? Do you have an iPad phone? He goes my phone. I said, you read this morning? He said, yeah, I read this morning. I said show me. He's like, right right now. I was like, yeah, yeah, show me. So he pulls out his phone and I said, show me what you read. And he pulls it out and it's it was literally one of those apps that sends you one verse every morning, and it was you know those apps are they're going to send you something about love or you know, something to make you feel better, always to make you feel better. And I said that, I said, brother, that's not what I mean. Reading the Bible. That's that's great to have that appen at four o'clock. You're getting off work and you read a verse. That's fine, but that's not what I mean. That's that you're every morning you're getting up and you're eating skittles when you need a hearty breakfast, and you're going I don't know why I'm still hungry. I eat every morning. What are you eating? I'm eating skittles. I'm saying that because my son Lincoln ates it was last night, so read. I would go to something. Go to the meat, go to the steak. Stop eating skittles and go to something like the Book of John, the Book of Mark, that's the shortest gospel. Go to Mark, I said John too much, or Matthew. Go to Mark and start a Mark one and start reading, not fast, not too much, don't consume too much. Do it at a pace that you could understand, and move slowly through the different little perick apes, and pray before you read, say Lord, will you show me who you are? I don't want my faith to fail me. Will you reveal to yourself who you are as you promised to do through your word? And read, and then close your Bible and think about it throughout the day, and then the next morning open your Bible again or your app and pick up right where you left off yesterday and continue doing that the rest of your life.
And getting to a church where you have older godly guys who can encourage you when you're having those difficult times and you feel like your faith isn't strong enough, so you.
Want to come again, and we'll continue as the conversations on church.
Yeah okay, I love talking about church.
So comment below if you have a question and we will return to this see you guys. Thanks for joining me on the Granger Smith Podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel, hit that little like button and notification spell so that you never miss anytime I upload a video.
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