How to Find A Church

[00:00:00] Cody: Hi, thank you for tuning in to the Logic of God podcast. I'm Cody. 


[00:00:16] Gina: I'm Gina. 


[00:00:16] Cody: And I'm Ben. If you're returning, thank you for coming back and if you are a new guest, welcome. 


[00:00:35] So, we've covered how to study your Bible. Once you grasp that, the next logical step, I think, would be finding the right church that fits where you're at in your walk with God. Definitely. So, is it okay to not go to church? 


[00:00:53] Ben: Actually, I think that is a good question to start with. Because I know of a lot of people who've said at one time or another that they're not religious, but they're very spiritual. 


[00:01:03] And they'll lay some kind of claim to Christianity, and they'll say, I just, I'm not a church person, And they'll say things like, I've never really learned anything new at church, or I feel like I learn more on my own. Yeah, what do you guys think about that? Is that a legitimate reason to not find a church? 


[00:01:18] Gina: Industry standard in the largest churches in America is that staff members do not attend church service. It sends a strange message because you want to get people into your church building to attend service and classes and whatever offerings you have. If you're a mature Christian, should you still go to church? 


[00:01:37] Cause I think the church is valuable for, like, new believers who are looking to find their community and to find accountability and mentoring and learning and different things spiritually, but can you arrive at a destination that suddenly excuses you from going to church? Asking for a friend. 


[00:01:55] Ben: Okay. So at this point, I think the question's answer diverges in two directions. 


[00:01:59] Can you grow in Christ without a church? And can you grow in Christ by yourself? Now I think it's pretty clear you cannot grow in Christ by yourself. Definitely not. 


[00:02:09] Gina: Yeah. 


[00:02:10] Ben: But you desperately need people in your life who are going to speak truth over it. You need people who know more than you do, who can teach you about scripture and about interpretation of scripture, can lead you to different authors and people who know more than they do. 


[00:02:22] And then you can explore, and then you can build their life up as well as them building yours. As iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another. The question of whether or not you need a church, effectively, you've built a little mini church there. And that ultimately goes into what a church is. So, The Oxford definition of a church is essentially a building used for public Christian worship. 


[00:02:42] That's not really the way it's always been. For the earliest church, the word that they used most often in the Bible is the word Ecclesia. And Ecclesia is a Greek word, it essentially means a gathering. And it's not a word that was used exclusively for religious gatherings. It was literally just a gathering of people, and there was no predetermined amount. 


[00:03:00] I believe there was a typical amount that was associated with this word. I'm not super fluent in Biblical Greek. However, there was another word that was used a couple times, which is where we get the modern word church. And it was a couple of steps translated down from the Greek word karyakos. I'm not sure how that word is pronounced. 


[00:03:17] Doing my best. I'm going to go with karyakos, which is used in 1 and it refers to the Lord's supper. And in Revelation chapter one, verse 10, to refer to the Lord's day. Essentially, karyakos means belonging to the Lord. So. You are the church, you are the karyakos, you are belonging to the Lord. When we take both of those terms together, you are a group of people belonging to the Lord. 


[00:03:40] So from the perspective of the early church, and from a biblical perspective, the church is a group of people belonging to the Lord. You can't do it by yourself. Now that doesn't mean that there has to be a specific building, and I think this is where we're going to get in some territory where some people might disagree with me, I'm not sure. 


[00:03:56] I don't believe that you need to go to a place that is designated a church with a cross on it where there's a congregation that sings a bunch of songs together and you all sit down after the songs and then there's a preacher who comes up and then you go out and you have a barbecue or something. I do believe that you do need other Christians in your life. 


[00:04:13] And I do believe that there needs to be some degree of discipline there where you do need to meet regularly. And you do need to meet, and it's not that you have to sing, but there is praise that's involved. Praise and worship are an aspect of Christianity, and it has been for a very good reason. It's about elevating the Lord, singing praises to Him. 


[00:04:31] There's an entire book of the Bible specifically about that, Psalms. There's an important aspect of interacting with God that involves worship and praise. And so doing that with other believers is a very important thing. On top of that, having a setting where you can talk to one another, and then maybe if someone is given a message. 


[00:04:49] Gives that message there were a lot of churches that started that way and there are a lot of modern churches that actually started that Way just a bunch of people. Can you 


[00:04:55] Gina: expound on that a little? What do you mean by messages? 


[00:04:59] Ben: I go back to Nabeel a whole lot, Nabeel Qureshi He talked about how very early on in his Christian walk There was a group of I think six guys and they would meet and then they would just talk with one another for hours about Things that they found when they were studying the Bible that would be more or less a message You It's not a sermon necessarily, but it's people talking about insight that they've received into the Bible. 


[00:05:21] Gina: So it's more spiritual or Holy Spirit led instead of man led through sermons is what you're saying. Yeah, 


[00:05:27] Ben: it's Spirit led, but it's also intellectual because they were talking about intellectual edification, about a mental understanding of Scripture and what's said in it. The, uh, the modern idea of the church, I would say you don't have to have that. 


[00:05:40] I do think that it's a good thing to have, but it's not the only thing that you should have, at the very least. 


[00:05:47] Gina: So this is not an excuse to avoid the modern church. It's more so an explanation of the difference between then and now. Okay. Fair. 


[00:05:59] Ben: But what do you guys think? 


[00:06:00] Gina: We have been on different walks. 


[00:06:03] There was a season where Cody was very vocal about not feeling need, the need to go to a church. He thought it was important when we were dating and when I needed to build a foundation. But we got to a point where we weren't really feeling satisfied with our church in Ohio. And we were going through a really terrible season personally. 


[00:06:26] And I think it was a combination of feeling disappointed by the church's response to what we were going through and then also feeling like they weren't really scratching the itch in terms of theological and intellectual discussion. And we've noticed that at every church that we've gone to, they don't really like to go too deep. 


[00:06:46] They don't like to pick things apart and help people go deeper. It's very much So we see, I see the power in the evangelical church, but I also see some gaps. And I think that is where people are going wrong with their expectations of what a church can provide them. And that's, I think, a really good segue into the church being a building or being people. 


[00:07:14] Because we put a lot of faith in, I put a lot of faith in this building and these pastors. And a lot of times the pastors are overworked. They have a lot of paperwork that stands in the way of allowing the spirit to move. And that's unfortunate, but it's true. And you run into a church that does an incredible job on Sunday. 


[00:07:32] But stuff is lacking in certain demographics the rest of the week. And that's where people have to step up. And it's not the pastor's job, and it's not the church staff job, and you don't have to be in the church building to have that. But you do need to figure out How to live that out in your life. And I think that it is unique to independent calling. 


[00:07:53] So you might have a plumber and a teacher and a doctor all in the same church building, and then they go home and their spiritual gifts are going to look different and their walk with the Lord is going to look different. And it's really powerful to get those people together outside of church to show their diversity. 


[00:08:08] And then to go deeper. That's why I love that we have the group that we have here on this podcast, because there's a lot of variety and diversity, but we get to scratch that itch of going deeper and exploring and explaining things that sometimes the church misses. 


[00:08:22] Cody: Yeah. I think it gets into your view and what you believe the church is meant for most modern churches. 


[00:08:29] I think Gina, you mentioned, or maybe it was Ben is more of an evangelical approach now than a feeding approach. And that is what we've been talking about throughout the podcast is learning how to feed yourself and not being spoon fed by the church in general. It's great to go there and grow and get fed, but that shouldn't be your only source of scripture. 


[00:08:58] That shouldn't be your only source of connection with God that should happen throughout the week. So do, do I think you need to get into church? Yes. For the. Fellowship and worship and the accountability that has, but not necessarily going there. And that's your only time to be fed. 


[00:09:16] Gina: I agree with that. And I think the reality is that if you have expectations of your church, like at all, you're always going to be disappointed. 


[00:09:25] You're always going to find a reason to become church hurt. And that's why a lot of new Christians leave because, Oh, the pastor. Made a mistake. And now I can't trust any pastors or the church didn't offer the thing that I wanted them to offer. And they wouldn't listen to me and I paid my tithe and I paid my dues and I did what I wanted to do and what they wanted me to do and they won't do what I want. 


[00:09:45] So if you go into. This whole idea of going to church with these expectations. The pastor is a holy person who lives a sanctified life, who's perfect, and they're basically Jesus on Earth. You're getting this incorrect presupposition that was probably provided to you from Catholicism and from modern media, like movies and stuff, and then you're also going in with your own hurts and your own habits and things that are bothering you, and you're looking for a solution for that, and church definitely can help you find that solution. 


[00:10:14] solution, but you're going to be very disappointed if you go into church with expectations and then they don't meet your expectations and you don't communicate properly and ask for what you really need and get resourced. 


[00:10:26] Cody: And you see this a lot throughout the Old Testament with the Israelites is the priests were really the only connection to God that the Israelites had. 


[00:10:35] They had to go through the priests. And we've carried this into modern Christianity of thinking that we have to have somebody mediating between us and God or that they have a better communication line with God. And we put them on this pedestal. That's not how it is. We're all called to be priests through Christ, like, not necessarily, you're not, everybody's not called to be a pastor and teach, but in a sense, we have that ability to connect with God on an individual level without the assistance from anybody else. 


[00:11:10] Gina: Yeah, you may need instruction, but you don't need them to be the way maker or whatever. 


[00:11:15] Cody: Yeah, they should be equipping you. and tooling you up to make that connection yourself, but they are not that connection or that tool. 


[00:11:24] Gina: And I mean, in all of the years that we've been in church, we've seen pastors fall. 


[00:11:29] We've seen pastors not study. We've seen pastors be extremely spiritually unhealthy. So even if they don't give you the tools and educate you, that's not an excuse to quit. You just have to keep looking. 


[00:11:40] Cody: Oh, and is it Paul or Peter who talks about being every breeze of the wind going to and fro. Like, every man made theology, I can't remember the scripture, but that's what happens when you put your foundation in man, rather than building the foundation yourself. 


[00:11:59] Yeah. 


[00:12:00] Ben: I agree with you guys 100%, and I do think that there is an element of quasi deification that may be too strong a word, but there is a lot of that kind of thing, where people elevate pastors beyond what they should be. That being said, I do think that leadership is still a very important thing. There are people who have the gift of leadership and there are a lot of leaders who do, it's not that they hear from God in a way that you can't, but it's that a lot of times the people who have the gift of leadership are capable of assembling this information and disseminating it in a way that's very digestible for people. 


[00:12:35] And you get it in a way when someone with leadership teaches you in a way that you won't get it yourself. And for those people who have the gift of leadership who go into ministry, those are the people who should, in theory, become pastors who end up leading churches. And there is value in an actual church building. 


[00:12:52] I don't want to make it sound like we all go to church. I may have gotten given the impression earlier that I'm more for people meeting in Your mom's basement with a group of eight men and women singing songs and then sharing what you read in the Bible and then going home on Sunday. I'm not against that, and I do think no matter what, you should be supplementing your time at church on Sundays with something like that. 


[00:13:14] You should be having a Bible study, a group of people that you meet either through church or your friends. Who you meet up with and then you do stuff aside from just church and you can do things like community outreach because I guarantee you there are people in your community who have needs and the best way that you will find to get closer to the almighty and to get closer to the people in your church is to do a ministry outreach program where you go out and you help people to be the actual hands and feet of Jesus. 


[00:13:39] I promise you, you will grow a lot as a person and you will grow closer to the people in your church. 


[00:13:44] Gina: I would agree with that. I would just caution that if you think it's sufficient. To pay your tithe and not serve, or to serve only when it gets shown on social media, or to serve only when your church premeditates it, you're probably not serving with the right heart. 


[00:14:04] Serving is a really big part of being a Christian. It's a lot of what Jesus has called us to revolves around serving our local community. And so that's just my little spiel. But I really dislike the mentality that I've seen in megachurches of give us your tithe and we will use it. And then also give us your time, but only how we say so. 


[00:14:29] And that's it. That's all they do. And I don't really think that's good enough because there are people in our communities that are crying out for help and we're walking past them and we don't even see them. And I think that's a problem. Serving needs to be more than what your church is offering. 


[00:14:45] Ben: Yeah, I think there is a temptation. 


[00:14:47] I think we've all fallen victim to this at one time or another, where you're asking, okay, what's, what is the minimum? What is asked of me? What is it that I'm being asked? I want to do that and no more. Like, where is that line? I will go to that line. I won't cross it. I just want to know because I want the rest of my life to belong to me. 


[00:15:03] God asks for 10%. I will give that. The 90 is mine. And yet, we all think that way. From time to time. The enemy gets his wins and when he can. That isn't the way that we should be approaching things. I absolutely agree with you Gina. We should be not looking for the minimum We should be looking for what God is asking us to do 


[00:15:19] Gina: day to day not on an annual basis It would be day to day like person to person. 


[00:15:25] How can I be an image bearer of Christ? So Let's answer once and for all is a church the building or the people I think we all have different thoughts. 


[00:15:34] Cody: The church, is it the building or the people? I would generally say that the church is the people, because if you look at the church being taken up in Revelation, it's not, your church building's not going to heaven with you. 


[00:15:49] And there's a lot of different aspects, the hands and feet, Paul describes it as individual body parts, and with Christ as the head. So I think it's more of a. person than, like, people, persons than it is the building, in my opinion. 


[00:16:05] Gina: Let's break down Christianese for a second. What is the Big C Church? 


[00:16:11] Cody: The Big C Church is like the whole of Christianity, like, worldwide. 


[00:16:16] Ben: Like all of the believers together, essentially. Yes, yes. All of the people who believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. is God incarnate who came to earth 2, 000 years ago, suffered and bled and died for your sins and rose again. All of those people, essentially all people who adhere to the five central assumptions that we outlined in the first several episodes of our podcast. 


[00:16:36] So, yes, the big C church is people who recognize that God exists, that God is good and perfect in his goodness, that he loves us, that he demonstrated that love by coming in the form of Jesus Christ 2, 000 years ago, and that he speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures, the Bible. Those five things, that's what makes you the big C church. 


[00:16:53] Gina: So a church is the building. The church is the people. That's my definition. 


[00:16:59] Cody: I think that's accurate. 


[00:17:00] Gina: Thank you. 


[00:17:01] Ben: I would say that's actually a very good explanation. But I would also say that inside this question, there's the idea of, is there such a thing as hallowed ground? Is there such a thing as ground, a place that is sacred that you would want to do your worshiping? 


[00:17:15] Not that God would not hear you anywhere else, but there are individual places that would bring you closer to God if you worship there or sought him there or prayed there. And I would say, yes, actually, there are places that you could consider to be hallowed ground, holy ground. Aside from the fact that God literally says that when he talks to Moses in the burning bush, and you could say that was only holy ground because God was physically there. 


[00:17:39] Yes, I would agree. That's why I would say that there are places where people have been anointed in the spirit, where they pray together. And where that's a regular occurrence, where you could say that is hallowed ground. Now that doesn't mean that there's some kind of magic there. 


[00:17:52] Gina: We went to Israel in March, and we had a lady with us that was like, I'm getting healed! 


[00:17:59] And it was like, what? Because she thought that going to holy places would heal her, and not her faith. 


[00:18:05] Ben: But there's um, like the pool, that was at the time of Christ considered to be a holy place, where the angel would churn the waters, and if you could manage to get to the water, you would be healed. The Bible doesn't explicitly say that's wrong. 


[00:18:15] And it doesn't implicitly say that it's right either. 


[00:18:17] Gina: I wish we had a record such and such number was healed and it would be so interesting. 


[00:18:22] Ben: But I would say that just speaking from personal experience, there are churches I've gone into where I've entered and it feels like there's nothing there. It's just a bunch of people who meet and they sing songs and then they leave. 


[00:18:34] And then I've been to tiny churches with barely anybody in there. They're like in a strip mall. They can barely scrape together enough money from the 50 people who attend regularly to pay for the rent. But then you go in there and it's like you can feel the spirit in the air. 


[00:18:47] Cody: Is that the building or the people 


[00:18:49] Ben: though? 


[00:18:49] It's really both because it's even something that you can feel at times when no one is there. And sometimes you could say, okay, that's just my memory of the event. Whatever, your memory is tied to the place. And I would say, yeah, like that's true of, and it's not even just churches. There are places in nature where people will pray, like they will feel that it's such a beautiful and incredible place that it evokes a feeling of awe and reverence. 


[00:19:11] Gina: There are holy moments for sure. 


[00:19:14] Ben: And I would say that there are places like Notre Dame, where the fact that it took people hundreds of years to make, and there were people who gave their lives in service to making something so beautiful. For just the sake of God, and they knew that they would not see it. 


[00:19:29] And they knew that people would forget who they were, but they knew they were making a monument to the almighty. Have you ever been there? No. And I haven't. It 


[00:19:37] Gina: feels like the most evil place. I was like terrified in that place. 


[00:19:42] Cody: Is it because you thought the hunchback was going to come? No, 


[00:19:45] Gina: no, it's the oppression of the Catholic church, but that's a whole other episode or maybe not. 


[00:19:50] Ben: We might get to that in a bit because we do have differences between Protestants and Catholics. And what are those? We'll get to that in a little bit, but it's sufficient to say, I do think that. It's not necessarily that you, God makes it so that he is more in one place than another, but I do think there are places where you feel God's presence more powerfully. 


[00:20:08] Gina: Do you think that's because of the posture of the people that are involved? Or do you think that it's, do you think that the people are the preventing factor or what would be the reason why God wouldn't be present somewhere? 


[00:20:22] Ben: So I don't want to go too much into it. There have been places where I been like actual physical places. 


[00:20:28] And it's just me, and God is not there, and it's not a church, it was actually a home, it was a home I grew up in, and God was not there. Not that he was completely banished, but you could feel that it wasn't a good place, it was a bad place. If we can reason from that, that there are places where it feels like God's presence has withdrawn. 


[00:20:47] It would also make sense that there are places where God's presence is more condensed, where it seems like there is more of him. Now, it would also stand to reason that if there are individual locations where that is the case, it's not just people meeting. It would also make sense there are individual locations where it's almost like God is being sentimental. 


[00:21:04] Now, I, I wouldn't be able to back this up with scripture necessarily. Maybe there's something somewhere. But I would think that there are, like, God talks about doing things for people that didn't earn it for the sake of David. Like, he talks about David's descendants, and he says, For the sake of my servant David, I will show you kindness. 


[00:21:21] Like, God is sentimental about people. Like, he has a special relationship with certain people. And I would think he also maybe has a special relationship with certain places. Now again, I wouldn't teach a sermon on this, and I'm not married to the idea. It's more just amusing. Like, maybe there is something to that. 


[00:21:37] I don't know. 


[00:21:38] Cody: Yeah, I'm open to the idea, but for me, just looking at the Old Testament and how much work went into purifying a place where God could dwell that is man made. is hard for me to think that still exists today outside of the inward cleansing of the blood of Jesus. With the tearing of the veil and the destruction of holies and all of that, and then the inward dwelling of the Holy Spirit, we are now cleansed and purified how they used to do the old temples with the blood of Christ. 


[00:22:19] now so that the Holy Spirit can dwell in us, and to me it's more people based than place based. 


[00:22:26] Ben: I would agree that no matter what, it is more people based than place based. If you are looking to develop a relationship with Christ, if you're going to choose between either seeking out natural beauty that evokes God so strongly that it brings you closer to Him versus speaking to people who know Him personally and have a personal relationship, go with the people every day of the week. 


[00:22:45] Gina: I have a question. If, in the Old Testament, they worked very hard to make a place clean and purified and holy enough for God to reside, would it then make sense for people to need to make themselves as pure and as holy as possible so that God could dwell within them? 


[00:23:04] Cody: I think there is something to that. 


[00:23:06] Jesus does that purification with his sacrifice on the cross, but also, before taking communion, there's I can't remember, I wish I had the scripture pulled up, but there's something about not bringing your sin into taking communion and the congregation. 


[00:23:24] Ben: Taking it in an unworthy way. Yes. Yes. 


[00:23:26] Cody: Yes. So I think there's something to that, yes, but. 


[00:23:30] To pinpoint it and build a doctrine around it. I don't think there's enough information for that. But yeah, if you want to be like this indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and I'm not talking like you instantly speak in tongues or anything, but I do think there is a sense of purification of your heart that you have to do to even be able to receive that. 


[00:23:50] Ben: Any thoughts? What's curious is that the people that we know in the Bible that We're the closest to God looking at the Old Testament. First, we have David. We have Elijah David was so close to God that he was considered a man after God's own heart And he was also one of the most flawed people you'll find in the Bible He made mistakes constantly but the reason that he was considered to be a man after God's own heart was because he was constantly seeking God and whenever he Made a mistake he would repent and he would seek the Lord's judgment as opposed to man's judgment You or the judgment of his peers because he believed that the God he served was the most just and loved him and loved his people and would ultimately seek their benefit, even if there was a great punishment that would come in the wake of something terrible he did. 


[00:24:36] And when you look at a guy like Elijah, Elijah was an incredibly sarcastic guy, He was running away constantly. He was afraid. He was a man who lived in fear, and the Bible makes that clear. And God had to specifically come to him and give him strength in order for him to continue his work. The Bible makes it very clear that we are imperfect people, but God will still come to us, and he will still make himself known, and he wants a relationship with us. 


[00:25:01] And when you go into the New Testament, like Peter, the rock on which he will build his church, Yeah. It's that's not the type of person you would expect to be your first draft pick, like the guy who gives you up three times, no less. But that's the type of people that God uses. And I do think that, that there came a point in Peter's life, especially where there seemed to have been a turning point. 


[00:25:22] He still made mistakes. Paul talks about how there was a point where Peter started spending a lot more time with the Jewish believers, and he started distancing himself from the Gentiles and was making eyes with the circumcision group. And Paul had to call that out and go to his face and say, this isn't the right thing, you know, that it's not right. 


[00:25:40] So he still made mistakes, but I do agree with you, Cody, and that I think There is a point where there was a turn inward, and he started analyzing his life for the worst aspects of himself, and he called upon the Spirit to help him with those things. Like, there was the point where he was literally anointed with the Holy Spirit, and there was a very clear change in the Book of Acts going forward, where Peter was not the same person. 


[00:26:01] And, so yeah, I do think that sanctification through the Spirit is a thing, that if you are someone who is actively seeking the Lord, And calling upon his name and embracing the power of the Holy Spirit. You are going to be a changed person and people should see that in you. Having said all of that, we'll assume going forward that it is a good thing for you to find a church, a small C church, because you are already a part of the big C church, like Gina said, finding a small C church, finding a building, a place where there are other like minded individuals who will help you grow. 


[00:26:31] How do you go about finding one of those? 


[00:26:33] Gina: I know, pick me. Yes. Flyers in the mail for fall family festivals. 


[00:26:38] Cody: All family festivals. Flyers? Celebration of the devil's holiday? No. 


[00:26:44] Gina: No. Trunk or treat? This is how we found the Pentecostal church, accidentally. They were so persistent. They kept sending us mail and we were like, maybe we should go. 


[00:26:53] Ben: You're just encouraging them. You never say yes to a Pentecostal. 


[00:26:56] Cody: In our defense. It's nothing on the flyer was Pentecostal. I did my due diligence of looking on the website, looking at their mission statement, their core beliefs. Nothing said anything about being Pentecostal. And this wasn't just your normal rowdy bunch of Pentecostals. 


[00:27:11] This was cartwheels down the aisles, 


[00:27:14] Gina: very antisocial, 


[00:27:17] Ben: head banging and 


[00:27:19] Gina: banging their head against things. 


[00:27:21] Ben: Yeah, they were smart. They didn't tell you they were Pentecostal. They know what their image is. They know they're not going to get anyone through the door if they're like, Hey, so we are a Pentecostal church. 


[00:27:28] It 


[00:27:28] Gina: was a big, beautiful church, but you walk through this little tiny door in 


[00:27:32] this like really narrow hallway in this really big church. And you're like, okay, something's wrong. So this 


[00:27:38] Ben: actually goes nicely into denomination. So we've just talked about Pentecostal. We mentioned evangelical earlier. So yeah, what exactly is a denomination of. 


[00:27:49] Can 


[00:27:51] Gina: we start by delineating the top down, like the top down umbrellas, you have a Christian and then you have a Catholic and Protestant and then like further that I think that 


[00:28:05] Ben: you basically already started us there. So yeah, there's the big C church Christianity. Then there's cults. Then beneath Christianity, there is Catholicism and Protestantism, and also Greek Orthodox, but nobody cares about them. 


[00:28:21] Oh no, where did 


[00:28:22] Gina: you go? Poor Greek Orthodox, 


[00:28:24] Cody: they make the best cookies. 


[00:28:27] Gina: And they know how to make you feel real guilty. They 


[00:28:30] Ben: have mastered a handful of things really well. That's why they're still around. God bless them. Windex is the cure all, or is that just Greek? Big fat. I think that's the movie. That was my big fat Greek wedding, but could still be. 


[00:28:41] I don't know. I don't know enough Greek people to tell you, but regardless, it's mainly these days talked about in terms of Protestantism and Catholicism. 


[00:28:49] Gina: What's a Protestant? 


[00:28:50] Ben: So a Protestant is essentially a Christian who is not Catholic. 


[00:28:53] Gina: Okay. 


[00:28:54] Cody: Protestant. 


[00:28:55] Ben: What were 


[00:28:55] Cody: they? Pro Catholic church. 


[00:28:57] Ben: Yeah. So that kind of goes back to a Martin Luther. 


[00:29:00] And there's a gentleman back in, what was it, like the 1500s? A long 


[00:29:04] Gina: time ago. 


[00:29:05] Ben: Somewhere around there. And he was a gentleman who had read the Bible and was not a fan of some of the things that the Catholic Church was teaching. And so he came up with something called the Ninety Five Thesis, which was specifically about, Uh, one of the seven sacraments, basically the seven things that you can do as a Catholic to atone for sin. 


[00:29:24] And one of the seven sacraments is something called indulgences. And at the time of Martin Luther, it was the idea that you could pay money to the church to forgive sins. And Martin Luther had read the Bible, and he came up with 95 reasons from the Bible about why. Uh, paying money to the church as an indulgence is not a good thing, but one thing led to another. 


[00:29:42] It's a gross oversimplification, but for the sake of this podcast, from that, there was the protesting or Protestant movement that developed, and then that further fractured into different groups. So these days we have quite a few, I think it's well over a thousand different. 


[00:30:01] Gina: A denomination is a branch or subgroup within Christianity that has a distinct name, organizational structure, and set of core values, or doctrines. 


[00:30:12] The attempt to state, in intellectually consistent terms, the message of the gospel and the content of the faith it elicits. 


[00:30:26] Ben: Yeah, there's our denominations, which are groups of people who have doctrines, and doctrines are us interpreting what the Bible says. 


[00:30:34] Gina: I have a question. 


[00:30:35] Ben: Yes? 


[00:30:36] Gina: What's the difference between the opinion and the interpretation of the Bible? 


[00:30:41] Ben: They're, they're both more or less the same thing. You interpret based on opinion. 


[00:30:46] But opinion is more an immunity to being called you're wrong, whereas an interpretation you actually have to provide your homework. 


[00:30:52] Gina: Do you agree with that? For the most 


[00:30:54] Cody: part, 


[00:30:54] Gina: yeah. Okay. I'm just playing games. I'm sorry. 


[00:30:59] Ben: No, it's okay. We're having fun here, folks. But yeah, there's the Catholics and then the Protestants, and then the Protestants divide into thousands of different groups. 


[00:31:07] But there are three main ones in the United States. So, if you're going to try to find a church, it's probably going to be one of these three groups. Uh, the largest group, according to the U. S. Religious Census, which was done in the year 2020, was the Protestant denomination, non denominational. 


[00:31:24] Gina: Non conformist. 


[00:31:26] Ben: Now, you may be wondering, uh, how on earth can you have a denomination that's called non denominational? Essentially what it means is that there are groups, denominations that go back hundreds of years with their own sets of traditions and things like that. And so you'll have tons of individual churches that adhere to more or less a certain kind of central doctrine that's taught by that denomination. 


[00:31:48] A non denominational church is essentially a church that's on its own. It's in its own orbit. It doesn't have a history going back. And it doesn't have Like a council or a group of people who inform all churches under that branch, under that umbrella of a denomination. What it is that they should believe is their core doctrines. 


[00:32:06] So if you have a non denominational church, you don't really know what you're getting. They could be close to Methodist or they could be close to Baptist or they could be close to Catholicism or Like they could be pretty much anything 


[00:32:16] Gina: or as our pastor likes to say we better be Pentecostal. We better be charismatic We better be all of them 


[00:32:22] Ben: But so yeah, there's individual denominations, but then there are different approaches which is more what I would call Pentecostal and evangelical So yeah, what would you guys consider Pentecostal and Evangelical churches? 


[00:32:34] Gina: Evangelical would be with the intention of spreading the message of the gospel. They would be trying to reach as many people as possible with the good news. 


[00:32:43] Cody: Yeah, they usually have some sort of underlying, like if it grows to a certain amount, they plant a new church and they target certain areas is the evangelicals that I know of. 


[00:32:54] I don't know any specific doctrines to evangelical churches though. 


[00:32:59] Ben: Yeah, it is more or less just the focuses on spreading the word and spreading the church. But then you also have stuff like Pentecostal. We've mentioned Pentecostal a few times. So how would you describe a Pentecostal church? 


[00:33:09] Cody: Pentecostal likes to how would I put this so I don't 


[00:33:16] Gina: They believe that the Holy Spirit interacts with them, or possesses them, or fills them, and it comes out in unique ways. 


[00:33:27] Cody: They believe in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the very activeness of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in today's day and age. 


[00:33:38] Ben: Essentially, if you've seen either of the Blues Brothers movies, It's that. And it's not even an exaggeration. That is almost exactly what you should expect if you find yourself going to a Pentecostal church. 


[00:33:50] There is tons of singing. There's tons of weeping all over the place. There's tons of 


[00:33:55] Gina: laughter. Tons 


[00:33:56] Ben: of laughing, tons of dancing. Almost always musical accompaniment for the pastor when he preaches. Oh yeah. That's very important. 


[00:34:03] Gina: We went by accident and people were cartwheeling up and down the aisles. 


[00:34:08] banging their heads against pews, laughing maniacally, clapping, waving flags, shaking tambourines. It was a lot of noise and things happening all at once while somebody was trying to teach and praise. 


[00:34:24] Cody: There was no snakes though, so thankfully they weren't that far. But 


[00:34:26] Gina: I 


[00:34:28] Ben: actually went to a Pentecostal church back when I was going to college, and I actually really enjoyed it. 


[00:34:34] There are different degrees of energy that you'll find in Pentecostal churches, just like with all churches, even when you go to specific denominations. Actually, before I go into that, I should probably finish for the top three. So yeah, number one was non denominational. So basically they don't know what they're doing. 


[00:34:50] We don't know what we're doing. We're non denominational. We're confused. Someone help us. The second largest was Baptist. And Baptist is actually another fairly wide umbrella. Baptists do vary pretty significantly church to church. There are different sub denominations within Baptist. There's the big one, which is Southern Baptist. 


[00:35:08] And then there's another branch, I don't remember the name of the other. 


[00:35:11] Cody: First Baptist is a big one. 


[00:35:14] Gina: I want to make a differentiation for anybody who's gone to a church and maybe not been aware of where they're at. If you have female pastors at your church, You're probably at a non denominational church 


[00:35:25] Cody: or Methodist. 


[00:35:26] Gina: Yeah, it's really it's becoming more popular But if you're seeing women teaching in your church, which is not a bad thing. It's a good thing Depending on who's teaching and all of that You may not be in the denomination that you think you're in. I don't know, I wanted to point that out because that's a big reason people go into the churches we've been into and then they leave because they realize women are teaching and it's really important that you know what you're getting yourself into when you go. 


[00:35:56] Ben: Yeah, so it is very important for you to understand the reason that we're pointing out the different denominations here. The big three, which. To round it out, the last one's Methodist, but to round out those three denominations, the reason that you would even care is because if you're going to a Baptist church, while there are a lot of differences between the various Baptist churches, and there are different disagreements that they have about doctrines, and there's a degree of liberty that they have in teaching the Bible. 


[00:36:25] There are certain doctrines that are pretty consistent throughout all Baptist churches. And if you look into the Baptist theology, and you find that there are certain things that you disagree with, you don't have to go to a Baptist church. 


[00:36:39] Gina: Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our podcast today. 


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[00:37:03] We hope you have a great day.