There is something that we've lost the local pub idea just sitting out and just sitting and hanging out and talking about life. And it's not organized. It's not a. All right, everybody's together, so it's time to have a Bible study. It's just loving on each other and lifting each other up and just listening to one another and talking to one another.
The spirit in me ministers to the spirit in you and ministers to the spirit in the next person.
Right.
we live in a beautiful time in which God indwells us. And so when we come together as believers, the spirit and the word flow naturally through our get together, and that becomes what knits us together as one.
Well, hello again, and welcome to the Trim the Wick podcast. I'm Dan.
And I'm Becky.
And we are here with you again this week. And I have a question, because this is something that's kind of, like, been, you know, bouncing around in my brain.
so what's your question? Well, first, let's start off with a statement first. I'm so confused.
Do you remember growing up, back in the days when we were in college and nobody had anything? You know, we were all broke college kids.
Right.
And we had our friends, and we would get together and everyone would bring a piece or whatever of something to make homemade, pizzas.
Oh, man. The chef boyardee pizza nights.
Yeah. And so we would have different couples that would all come together, and we would just make a pizza and just hang out.
Yeah.
play game or whatever. I think about those things in those times when it was almost easier when we didn't have any money.
Yeah. In a lot of ways, it was.
When you didn't have. We were at a college that was away from everything else.
Yeah. It was very rural America.
Yeah. So it was almost easier to build a relationship based on friendships and based on just hanging out together and spending time together.
Yeah.
And not having to make a big event thing out of it. And I just. The question I'm asking, or, the question that I'm kind of getting around the boat through the woods and to grandma's house about is the. It seems like to have fellowship now, it's got to be an event, or it's got to cost a lot of money, and it's got to have a sign up sheet, and it's got to kind of put you out just to hang out and to be friends.
Yeah. It does seem like that it's either, you know, if you're going to have friends within the church organization. It's very, either we're all doing the same mission work together.
Right.
Or we're all putting on the same event to minister to the community together.
Right.
Or, hey, we've had our Sunday worship service, and now we all have to go drop half of our salary to go eat a meal out because we can't just go house to house because it's not good enough.
Right. And that it seems like that excludes a lot of people. And I do think that there's this problem in the western church where it's like, if you're not doing an event, if you're not going out to eat or you're not making a big thing, then you can't have fellowship. And the problem is, is that a lot of times, there's not a lot of fellowship that goes on in those situations. You know, it's more.
It's all task oriented.
Yeah.
Right. It's not that there's anything wrong with doing those things. It's just that if those are the only places that you're getting together with other believers.
Right.
You don't actually have one in the bonds of love because you don't know each other well. Right.
Right. Well, and here's my question is, how do you break this habit? Because I do think that in our society now, the only time you get together with your friends is when you're doing something, as in, there's got to be, something produced, or there's got to be something that comes out of it, or it's because you're going to go out and spend a lot of money, you know, where are the cheap things?
You know, how do we just hang out and.
Exactly. And that. I guess that's the one I'm asking. How do we just go back to the point where we're just kind of hanging out where everybody knows our name and we're all glad we came and, you know.
Right. You know, the church, in acts, when they first started this whole gig, they knew how to do it. Right. They were right. They were in a place where not only did many of them maybe not have that much monetarily or financially, but according to, acts chapter two, they were. Yeah, I. Starting in verse 44. And all who believed were together and had all things in common, they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had
need. And day by day. And this is more what we're talking about. Day by day, they attended the temple together and breaking bread in their own homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. So they. Yeah, they did go to temple together. They did worship together, much like we do. That community worship is part of it. But they were in each other's homes breaking bread together. They
were. If they saw that somebody who they knew and cared about and had been in their home had need, they would go sell something that they had to go meet that need, instead of going. Well, you know, I guess if you can't afford to go out to the top tier restaurant with us, then you're just going to have to go home and eat by yourself.
Yeah. The big thing there is that you're seeing is that they built a community.
Yeah, very much so.
And yes, they were going to the temple together, and they were worshiping together, but they were breaking bread in each other's houses. And it says day by day, they were selling possessions, giving to the poor. This was just what the community of people were doing. They were just actively living it out.
Right. It's just what it looked like.
Yeah. it wasn't this thing where they were, like, we had to come together to do this.
Right. And it's much like, you know, you opened with that example from our college days. We did. We lived in a very tiny rural community in north Florida.
Right.
every student there was broke.
Yeah.
I mean, we had an on campus. We called it Dorcas closet, remember?
Yep.
We had an on campus place where wealthier community members in the city around us would donate used clothing, and it was free for all the students to come. And it was. We were that broken. It was that widespread that the. That we had an on campus thing. And so when we got together, everybody knew that there were zero expectations of putting on a big event
or going out to a restaurant. I mean, we only had Hardee's and subway in town anyway, but we weren't going anywhere because none of us could afford to go anywhere.
Right.
So it became. It became a fun game, almost.
Yeah.
You know, it was. Okay, I have enough leftover after paying rent to go get one box of chef Boyardee pizza crust mix.
Yeah.
Do you have enough to go get some mozzarella cheese. Cool. Do you have enough to go get some pepperonis? Awesome. We can all eat tonight together.
Yeah.
And that's all we did.
Yeah. Ah. The idea of building a community that supports each other. That encourages each other. There doesn't have to be an agenda.
Right.
I really. And here's pull back curtain a little bit. I really get annoyed at churches who look at the people like their assets because there's always got to be, what can this person do for the church? What can this person do for the church? What can this person do? And instead of going, what can we come together and just be this idea that it's always got to be a transactionary relationship.
Well, And people feel it.
Yeah.
People know very much. I mean, we've talked about this in our home before. People know when they've fallen into one of those two categories. Either you're an asset looking to be used in putting on those events and those very productive gatherings.
Yep.
Either you're an asset or almost worse, you're a project. You're a project, and you're the one that the attention of everybody is focused on, you know, fixing.
Yep.
Instead of us coming together as family, as brothers and sisters who want to get to know each other and come to understand that we're all kind of messy.
Yeah.
And we all have things that we bring to the table and things that we need the body of Christ to help us grow in. We all have assets and project portions to ourselves, but if we never get to know one another, it's hard to be together.
I am concerned about our churches and concerned about the idea of what religious people or christians think these days, because the idea that you go to church, you worship together, you build relationships together, seems to be gone. It seems to be more. Now, I choose a church because they have a great children's program or they have this. They all, they've got the rockin band, they've got. And the whole, they fill this need.
Or they give me a place to be, an outlet for what I want to do.
Right. And the whole purpose was community. Like you saw in acts two was that you come together in community. And, you know, I feel like we're just missing that so much because we keep putting expectations on what you're supposed to do. And, you know, it sounds like I'm being harsh to the churches and stuff, but a lot of times it's people's, just expectations.
Right. It's born out of the society in which we grew up and where we live. And this is what good, well meaning organizations produce. Right. This is what they do.
Well. And I think we see this also. You know, you look at, like, parents. Well, it's the, you know, it's birthday number two. So birthday number two means that we have to have the, you know, the pony that you ride on and the bounce house or whatever. And it's like, no, how about we just get together. We celebrate. We celebrate. We encourage one another. We just be together.
So it sounds like part one of the answer to your question of, so how do we get to that place where we're not excluding half of the body because they can't afford it.
Right.
And we're not getting together just to produce something or to accomplish a work. Sounds like step one is repenting of what we've turned it into in the first place. And going, wow, when I look at what fellowship, and I'm doing big old air quotes here, y'all, what fellowship in the church has become doesn't look anything like what fellowship in the body of Christ looks like according to the scriptures.
Right?
so we need to start with that step of repenting for what we've turned it into and then ask him to show us how do we have real relationships. And how do we have real relationships like these ones, in acts that it cost them, in the sense that everything that they owned wasn't theirs. Right. They looked at anything that we have is held in common with our brothers and sisters. So it's all on offer. So it costs you everything in that sense, but it also costs you
nothing. It means that you can have people into your home and they're. They're just family. They're just there to be with you.
Yeah.
you don't have to offer them an exciting event. You don't have to offer them the ego boost of saying, look, you accomplished this when we got together. You can just get together and be the people that you are and experience joy and experience celebration and sit with each other in grief and mourn with each other and build one another up. That's all that it needs to be.
Right? You know, you look and, read in some articles on our society now that we are more, connected to one another than ever before. But we are lonelier than we've ever been before as a people. And people are. The younger generation especially, you know, talks about how they're just, they feel so separated from everyone else and they feel so alone, even though they have their phones. And at two in the morning, three, they can call and contact anybody at
24 hours a day. And it's because a lot of this is because we don't do this anymore. We don't. Community. Community anymore.
No. You know, it's very surface level. Yeah, socializing and it's a. Yeah, we ticked the boxes or, yeah, I hit the heart and, you know, they know I love them because I hit the heart thing. Right? No, that's not how that works.
Yeah. No. So first we need to repent to say, hey, this thing that I made, it, it doesn't need me. That now. Jesus was asked, how will they know? How does the world know who his disciples are? And it says their love for one another. He doesn't say, oh, it's their big projects. Oh, he doesn't say it's, you know, because they all go out and they take half the restaurant on a Sunday afternoon and. No, it's.
They affect great societal change. Yeah. No, it's.
It's their love for one another. And I, you know, I want to say that, you know, it should be how we portray ourselves at church.
Right.
But I believe deeper in that because the church wasn't established yet, and Jesus was saying, they're gonna love one another in their community and how they live their life. And I made the joke in the reference of cheers earlier. There is something that we've lost. And the loss of the quote unquote. And I'm just gonna say it. The local pub idea. Just sitting out and just sitting and hanging out and talking about life and talking about the things. And it's not organized. It's not a. Okay,
all right. Everybody's together, so it's time to have a Bible study. Oh, it's okay. We got it. It's now time to pull the guitar out and start. No, it's just loving on each other and lifting each other up and just listening to one another and talking to one another. So I,
And in that, the spirit in me ministers to the spirit in you and ministers to the spirit in the next person. And so it's not like when we get together, we're going, we're gonna exclude all the God stuff so that we can just hang out. It's that God indwells us.
Right?
We live in a beautiful time in which God indwells us. And so when we come together as believers, the spirit and the word flow naturally through our conversation. They flow naturally through our get together, and that becomes what knits us together as one, helps us to love one another more
effectively. But if we're never participating in that, if we've structured it, so if we have grieved the spirit by limiting who he can be, m to just show up in our organized bible study, show up in our community outreach program, show up in our evangelism crusade, show up in our. Pick the event, then we've actually limited who he is.
Yeah.
And we can't be one. We can't be in one accord, the way the acts church was. We can't love one another the way Jesus said we would.
Yeah.
Because we don't even know each other.
Yeah. It makes it hard because we then put all our eggs into that basket.
Yeah.
So then will we walk in community? We go to a sporting event, we go, well, not, when we go to just being. We don't bring up the things of God, we push them down because, oh, well, this isn't where we're supposed to do that, because this isn't a church event or this isn't a christian gathering event.
Right.
So I'm not going to talk about God, and instead of going, no, this is where we are supposed to be talking about that for the believer, and this is going to be a controversial statement, I'm sure, for many, but for the believer, there is no sacred and secular.
Right. It's all sacred.
It's all sacred. So there is no place that, oh, well, I can talk about Jesus here, but I don't talk about Jesus there. No, for you, it's all open, it's all sacred. So this idea that it's got to be in this basket and it can't be in that basket, I think, is what hinders people or what is quote unquote safe space that we make for religious things and christian things.
when I'm on church grounds, it's Jesus time. But when I'm in my home or when I'm even as quickly as when I'm at that restaurant after church, now there's a separation. And so how do we. So we've, we repent of what we've made it. We understand that the call of Jesus on our lives is that we are to one love one another, as he loves us, and that will be the hallmark. So what are the practicals of that then? We've
repented. We've adjusted the attitude. We've got our spiritual in line, and now our desire is to love our fellow brothers and sisters. How do we do that in a way that doesn't exclude due to finances or due to, my gosh, when we were raising young children, we were a family of six. We had four young kids. We couldn't go a lot of places because either, a, it was too expensive, or b, it was very, very clear that with that many children in tow, we were not welcome.
Right.
You know, and I know that's the experience of a lot of people. So how do we make it budget friendly? How do we make it inclusive? How do we make it to where we as believers are building community and making sure that nobody gets left out of that. Yeah.
I know for us, we've got to get over the fact, and here's the things that we carry is, you know, we got to get over the fact that our house is too small or we don't have enough to provide. Because that's the opposite of what we're trying to do. And just start inviting and just say, hey, let's go to the park together. You know, your family with kids. Let's go to the park together. Hey, let's get together on a Friday night and play uno. do people even do that
still? I don't know, but just invite people over just to come out and hang out.
I think that's probably the key.
Let's just get together. Hey, you bring something, you bring something. Let's come together. Let's have nacho night at the house.
Right?
Or, you know, something like that.
Let's break bread in that way where it's. The entire burden isn't on the one hosting. I'll open up my 1200 square foot house. That absolutely does not look like a better homes and gardens magazine or, whoever the local designers are now. Yeah, we live in our house and we have children and dogs and people, and we make messes in our house and it's okay. And you're welcome to come here and make messes with us.
Yeah.
And it's okay, you know, and if I hear that you have need of something, if it's in this house and you have need of it, it's yours.
Yeah.
And unstructuring is kind of the word I'm thinking is we need to unstructure this whole thing of friendship. It doesn't have to be about formal events. It can just be. Hey, I was thinking about you. You want to come over? No, I don't have anything planned. No, I don't even have a meal planned. I might rummage in the cupboards and find something if you're hungry when you get here, but come on over. I think that word that you used, invite. Yeah, I think that's huge.
Well, I remember when we were young adults and we had a group of us, that young marrieds that we hung out together. And I remember we had a friend in that group, couple. And they were. I want to say they were from upstate new, York. They were very much of the. If you got together, it was. It was a production.
You know, there were expectations.
It was expectations. Everyone had name cards where they sat at the table, everyone had cards of topics and things to talk about and stuff like that. And I remember going in this, we were hanging out together and it's just going, you know, she went through so much stress and work when, we were. We would have been just fine just like hanging out and just sitting on the couch, you know, and I.
But the flip side of that is also they invited us into their home with their personalities and their backgrounds, and so we learned something through that.
Yeah, well, and that was one of the things that I was say, is that there's no pattern or this is the right way or wrong way or. You know what I mean? It's just, we had a great time there. We also went to another friend's house and we sat around on the, couch for a while, and then we went outside and played volleyball for a while.
Yeah.
And so there's nothing that says that it has to be done this way or that way. I think the biggest thing is that we need to start getting back this idea of community and being together without expectations and without making it a big deal.
Well, and I think one of the keys too is that we need to have that heart of hospitality where we are willing to invite our brothers and sisters into where we are as it is and not apologize for it not being enough and not make it something that it's not just, you know what, this is my home, this is my family, this is my life. I invite you
into it. And that requires, on both sides of the relationship, that requires a willingness to be vulnerable and to be seen, and it requires a willingness to withhold judgment. None. Of us are in the same position in life. And the acts two church had a broad range too.
Yep.
Right. It said that there were people who had stuff that they were able to sell off and there were people who needed the money from the stuff that they sold off.
Yep. There were both that were sitting down at the table.
Yep. They were sitting at the same tables. They were in each other's homes. It wasn't always, it wasn't just, well, you know, we'll go to the wealthy person's home because it's big enough. One of the times when you were in seminary, one of the most meaningful meetings that I went to was actually, it was a welcome to the college for the spouses of the seminarians.
Right.
And the college president's wife spoke on hospitality. And it's something I will never forget because she talked about, she goes, you know, it's easy to talk about hospitality now, because we live in the college president's mansion. Right.
Right.
I can have the entire school over and be just fine.
Yep.
She said, but when we were first married, we had a studio apartment. There was not even a separate bedroom. We had a studio apartment. And she said, we invited church members over all the time. We invited friends and believers over all the time. And she goes, we were sitting three deep on the bed. We were on the floor. We were, propped up on the kitchen countertops. Because it wasn't about what we lacked. it was about
being together. And I think in the church, so many of us have felt judged for this or that, have heard the offensive things said about us, that we're unwilling, to open our homes and be vulnerable to one another because we know what happened before.
Yep.
And so we need to come to a place of being willing to be vulnerable, to have people in our homes. And if we are the ones who are invited in, to be willing to go in and go, you know what? I'm gonna do what Jesus said, I'm gonna love you. I'm not gonna judge your paint job. I'm not gonna judge your kitchen cleanliness. I'm not going to judge whether you put Charmin or one ply birch trees in your toilet
paper holder. I'm going to come in and I'm going to be so grateful for the opportunity to build relationship with you.
Yep. It's that loving one another.
Yeah.
I think once you get that idea, once you get over those hang ups, you're going to see how, number one, your relationships are going to deepen drastically. You're going to see how easy it is to now talk freely in love to one another, and you'll be able to start loving other people. That group will begin to grow, and you'll be able to reach out to people you might never have thought that you'd be able to reach out to just because you started loving one another.
And you're gonna find that those creative ideas will come. The more you know one another, the more you'll go. You're interested in taking long hikes? Well, there's this really cool free state park two blocks over, 20 minutes over.
Or, you know, or it could be an hour away.
It could be an hour away. Hey, why don't we make a time to go do that? It's not expensive. It's not burdensome.
Yep.
But it's something we can go do.
Yep.
and you begin to find those creative places where it does become. Maybe you do build more going and doing, but it's based on and flowing out of having been together, having learned who one another are and going, yeah, we can just be just about anywhere and have a great time.
Yeah, that's an awesome thing. I would love to have a checklist of go. If you did this, you did this, you did this, and you're gonna all of a sudden have great relationships. But it's not that.
Nope. It's work.
It's work. And it is denying yourself and loving one another to build community. So we wanna encourage you as you, trim the wick. this is something that both Becky and I have struggled with over the years.
We're still a work in progress, y'all.
We are still trying to figure out how to do this, but we're being open to what God has for us and to love one another and to build community. Guys, we want to thank you so much for hanging out with us again this week and listening to the end. And, we really appreciate you. Please leave us a note of some of those little things that you do to build community. Some of those things that you've done over the years with friends or you're doing right now.
And, we'll put those up and we'll post those on our Instagram and stuff so that people can listen.
Creative ideas are always welcome.
Yep. We love doing that. I don't know if you've been on Instagram recently, but that's basically all it is, is creative ideas. but we'll love to take your ideas and put them up for other people to see and be encouraged by. Guys, if you are enjoying this, podcast and what we're doing, we want to encourage you to check out our website because you'll learn more about our ministry and what we're doing and who we are. go to Matthew two five seven.com and you can find out a little bit
about what we do. You can learn how to join with us in some of the work that we're doing. Also, we'd love for you to keep, up with our day today on our Instagram. And that's rimthewitglobal on Instagram. So just like that. And then you'll get all of our little updates and things that we throw out daily and all the fun little video stuff that we do. All right, guys, well, we want to encourage you to build community and love those around you.
Be the church instead of doing church stuff.
That's right. I. That sounds good. That's good stuff. All right, guys, thank you all so much for hanging out. We love you.
Bye, m.