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How do you pastor a member who won’t attend church? In this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever, Jonathan Leeman, and Alex Duke start by explaining the importance of meaningful membership at church. They discuss how pastors and members alike should approach members who have stopped attending church regularly and explain acceptable circumstances for church absences and how this does not mean that the member is neglecting a biblical command. They finish their conversation by advising pastors who may inherit a church where regular attendance isn’t seen as necessary.

• Why Meaningful Membership Matters
• How Should Pastors Approach Members Who Won’t Attend Church?
• What Should Members Do About Other Members Who Won’t Attend Church?
• When is Not Attending Church Acceptable?
• Changes Pastors Can Make for a Healthier Church

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Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Jonathan Leeman:

Hi, this is Jonathan Leeman.

Mark Dever:

This is Mark Dever

Jonathan Leeman:

And Alex Duke. Wait, is this Bible talk?

Mark Dever:

I wish. But no.

Jonathan Leeman:

Welcome to this episode of Nine Marks Pastors Talk. Nine marks exist to help pastors build healthy churches. Learn more at 9marks.org

Alex Duke:

For the lawyer. God,

Jonathan Leeman:

What do you think? Your Mark or something?

Alex Duke:

I don’t know. I’m just trying.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, brother, thank you for being here with us. Alex Duke, if you don’t know him, is the managing editor for 9Marks. He is something, Minister.

Alex Duke:

Yeah, director of youth ministry and Ecclesiology training just like I always hoped to be. My mom’s very proud

Jonathan Leeman:

In Louisville, Kentucky, and also one of the three hosts of Bible talk. If you’ve not listened to Bible talk, you really should. You, your church members, your family members, my wife, and your kids sometimes listen to it on the way to school in the mornings. Just you, Jim Hamilton.

Mark Dever:

And I’m uncomfortable with that guilt you’re throwing out with that use of the word should

Jonathan Leeman:

Sam? No, you should. You definitely should. Sam Ahmadi just walking through the Bible.

Alex Duke:

Yeah. I like the phrase Jim uses. He calls them expositional conversations where we just talk through, not every single phrase, but we skip a ton, the big ideas, and right now we’re in the middle of Numbers.

Jonathan Leeman:

Those guys aren’t very good at answering your questions.

Alex Duke:

No, they like to add before they answer.

Jonathan Leeman:

It really is funny. Well, in addition to all of this, Alex, you’ve written an excellent little book booklet in the church question series called What Should We Do about Members Who Won’t Attend? Do you think 15-year-old Alex would’ve ever written that book or thought to write that book or what would 15-year-old Alex have said to you for that book?

Alex Duke:

He would’ve said, number one, what are you talking about? Who cares? He would’ve asked me why I wasn’t writing about the Louisville Cardinals or the Boston Red Sox.

Jonathan Leeman:

But you were a part of a church. We don’t need to go into all the details.

Alex Duke:

Yeah, I was a Christian. I got saved sort of the beginning of middle school, and I was a member of a pretty large church in the town I grew up in.

Jonathan Leeman:

Who’s this booklet for the person who’s not attending or for the person who’s trying to help the one who’s not attending?

Alex Duke:

Well, yeah, it’s hard to write a book for someone not attending because how would they know about it and how would you get it to them? I think it’s probably most for pastors who,

Jonathan Leeman:

But you write it to the Christian.

Alex Duke:

I write it to the Christian, but it would be most useful in the hands of pastors and to give to members of his church to help them understand their responsibility as it relates to members who are unquote on the roll, but never actually there in person.

Jonathan Leeman:

Mark, in your church covenant, you have the phrase, we will not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Yet my hunch is this may be one of the most common pastoral issues. You face people not doing that. Is that a fair assessment and if so, why?

Mark Dever:

Yeah, I think it’s typical of 21st-century America, and I think it’s been typical of churches around the world and throughout the centuries. If you think even back to the inspired period of the Holy Spirit with the New Testament, Hebrews chapter 10, we read in verse 24 and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some.

So there were some even then who named themselves Christians and were named Christians who had the habit was taking on the habit of neglecting to meet together. Instead, he says, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. So it was the habit of some even in the first century to not meet together

How is Non-Attendance a Result of Poor Pastoring?

Jonathan Leeman:

And it’s a habit of some today. Why is that a failure of teaching on the part of pastors? What’s behind that habit?

Mark Dever:

I think one of the main failures is in teaching. So we haven’t formatively disciplined the church in the sense of teaching them the expectation that we should have to regularly assemble. And secondly, it’s the problem of churches and the way they’ve taken in members casually.

Alex Duke:

I spent basically the first half of this little booklet trying to tweak people’s intuitions about what a church is. I think most people think a church is a building an event or a particular ministry that they love. They don’t think of it as a people, like a subset of Christians, who have a specific kind of commitment to one another.

So I think the failure of teaching that Mark is talking about, is specifically about what a church is, and I think most Christians don’t know what that is. So if a church is a building or a thing, well, who cares if 10% aren’t there

Mark Dever:

And maybe including even what a Christian is, because if you have people joining your church who don’t come, you have to begin to ask, well, why are they not coming? And if you have somebody who never eats something is wrong with them, something physically is wrong, something’s off. If their body isn’t giving them the signals for hunger to feed them, it suggests maybe an absence of life or the same thing spiritually.

Alex Duke:

If you’re a family member and you never see your brother, that’s sad. And the scripture calls the church a family.

Why Meaningful Membership Matters

Jonathan Leeman:

Yeah, Alex, to quote you, meaningful membership is more important than sending missionaries to unreached people meaningful membership is more important than hosting evangelistic events in your neighborhood. It’s more important than pursuing justice, hosting a successful counseling ministry, baptizing hundreds, doing fantastic and fruitful evangelism on a college campus pursuing excellence in the arts, and starting a seminary. Anything else you can think of? Those are pretty big claims there, brother.

Alex Duke:

Yeah.

Jonathan Leeman:

Can you defend yourself?

Alex Duke:

What I was trying to get at there, and maybe I’m overstating for the sake of rhetoric, but those things describe what churches may or may not do. I think meaningful membership describes what a church is, and so if you’re failing at what a church is, then inevitably what you’re doing will be weakened even if it’s fruitful.

So I think we need to get first, right, what a church is, which is meaningful membership, and then all those other things which are important and you should do them will be strengthened and even fortified.

Mark Dever:

I heard more charitably. Perhaps what you’re saying is that if the capillaries are dissolving, it doesn’t matter how fast you can run the marathon or how heavy you can lift the weight, you’re going to be dissolving. And if you don’t have a church that understands they need to attend, your church won’t be up to anything else.

The Bible Assumes Members are Regularly Gathering Together

Jonathan Leeman:

Yeah. You make the point, Alex, that the way the Bible talks about the church assumes members are regularly gathering together. What do you mean by that?

Alex Duke:

Well,

Jonathan Leeman:

One Corinthians 16.

Alex Duke:

Well, I was thinking just the metaphors it uses. I mean a body, a family, a building sort of alive. So I think that the metaphors speak of its intimacy, it’s interconnectedness, it’s dependence. It doesn’t talk about the church as individual Christians as much.

It doesn’t talk about the church even as its posture to the unbelieving world. The way the Bible describes and I would say assumes what a church is, is just through its metaphors. It’s close. I mean, we know each other. We care for each other.

Mark Dever:

And if a pastor doesn’t understand that, that’s a pretty big deficit. I mean, if he doesn’t understand that himself, there’s no way his church is going to understand that. And I think pastors often feel very conflicted about talking about the importance of membership.

They feel there’s a kind of dirty self-interest in it. I’m telling you, you all need to come and hear me. And it’s just like, well, then that’s all off guy. You got to understand there’s something supernatural going on here and you’re just standing in as a steward.

And somehow you’ve got to get your mind around what the biblical truth is so that you can teach the people so that they’ll know what they need to do and not mistake it as a wrong craven self-interest on your part. How satanic for Satan to be able to incept in pastor’s minds that something that’s basic to the health of the body is actually something that’s carnal and

Jonathan Leeman:

Selfish, self-interested.

Mark Dever:

And because it may be sometimes in the way some pastors are in the way, some churches are kind of set up

Alex Duke:

It will change what the pastor prioritizes, what the congregation celebrates, and what the budget incentivizes. So if a pastor doesn’t care about this, he might be all about evangelism rallies or a particular ministry that is bearing fruit, and the church is going to love that. But if he’s not talking about this kind of more boring, assumed stuff, their understanding of the Christian life of what the church is, it’s just going to be, yeah, it won’t be fully formed.

Jonathan Leeman:

What occurs to me, as you guys were both talking, Alex, you said it depends on what a church is. People don’t understand what a church is. And Mark, you backed it up even further and said, it depends on what a Christian is and one could even say what the gospel is and teaches and adopts us into a people, right?

Once you are not a people, now you are a people. Once you had not received mercy, now you have received mercy. What occurs to me is when we have more practical conversations these days about internet church or Zoom or a live feed, should we keep the live feed on?

A lot of pastors are asking, it’s hard almost to have those conversations when there isn’t a clear understanding of what a church is, and what a Christian is. It’s like, okay, I got to do all this background work to explain all of this.

Mark Dever:

It’s like Mayor Bowser tells us to worship virtually during Covid. Well, what does that mean? I mean, does that mean I go to a certain website? Is that worshiping virtually? What does that have to do with the covenant I’ve taken before the Lord or the members of my church to gather with them regularly? Does that meet it? Is that sufficient to meet those biblical requirements?

Jonathan Leeman:

Yeah. Okay. So, Alex, the title is What Should We Do About Members Who Won’t Attend? Well, what should, okay, we’ve been talking about the principle you need to attend. Mark quoted Hebrews 10.

So you got the proof text, but then you talked about the implications with different metaphors. This is part of what a Christian is part of. What a, okay, so we got all of that. What should we do with members who won’t attend?

Alex Duke:

Well, I’m not going to repeat what we’ve already talked about in other episodes, and if there’s anyone in the world

Jonathan Leeman:

Mark likes to say, I’m sure they haven’t memorized them.

Alex Duke:

Well, if there’s anyone in the world who knows what we’ve talked about in other episodes even more than you two, it’s me.

Mark Dever:

I think my capacities are easily exceeded.

Alex Duke:

All I’m saying is there were two episodes that you did, Mark, I’m sure you remember this vividly with Matt Schmucker on cleaning the roles. And you guys have what basically amounts to an hour-long conversation where they go through systematically step-by-step about what to do. And so shorthand, you should pursue nonattending members, you should clean the roles, you should.

There are other things we could say to teach the church about the church, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the goal is you need to instruct your members that they should care about this. That like, oh, we have 4,000 members, but 1400 people here.

Or let’s lower the numbers. We have 91 members, but only 34 people here. That’s not like, oh, something we should get to one day that’s like big yellow, red, flashy wines that they should care about.

Mark Dever:

You wonder what those 63 are doing about the Lord’s Supper. Are they coming to the Lord’s Supper? Do they attend regularly? Do they attend only the Lord’s supper? Do they not even come to the Lord’s supper? Well, then what do they do about obeying that command of Christ?

Alex Duke:

And have you, the church, or you individually the pastor, had an adverse effect in self-deceiving these people

Mark Dever:

And helping these people be self-received?

Alex Duke:

You certainly don’t mean to do that, but that’s a fair question. The Action of your church done this because you’re just too busy with fill-in-the-blank. Other important stuff. So I think that’s kind of what I’m trying to get at in this book I think I grew up in a context where nominal Christianity was writ large, the normal experience.

I knew lots and lots of Christians, and I wouldn’t say very few, but certainly fewer real Christians, and nobody really did anything about it. And I didn’t know, because of the world I grew up in, I didn’t know there was anything to be done about it.

I didn’t know the church had a role in this. And so I hate to describe this as something like a hobby horse or a soapbox, but this is something I really care about because I’m not speaking about this in the abstract.

Jonathan Leeman:

You saw Christian high school friends crash and burn.

Alex Duke:

Well, it’s not even that dramatic. No, I saw Christian high school friends slowly turn the light on their Christian faith.

Jonathan Leeman:

That’s kind of what I meant.

Alex Duke:

Well, crashing burden implies,

Jonathan Leeman:

Okay, okay, fine.

Alex Duke:

I want to speak clearly. Right? So it’s not like they’re all doing drugs.

Jonathan Leeman:

I slowly turn the light out on their faith.

Alex Duke:

Well said. Yeah. It just, yeah, the heartbeat slowly, slowly went down. And I saw it over the years. And to be honest, part of me feels personally convicted that I didn’t personally just as their friend, irrespective of my relationship with them as a church member, didn’t do more.

But I know that their churches didn’t do a thing. This is not just a conversation in the abstract. This is a conversation where I’m thinking of dozens of people I know who got baptized at 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 year olds. They probably still claim to be Christians, but they do not live as a Christian.

Mark Dever:

And your church has left them thinking they are because they’ve never done anything about it.

Alex Duke:

Exactly. And so even if they don’t identify as Christians that church is still not serve them well. And so the hope of this book is that it would get into pastors’ and church members’ hands.

And so people would be like man, not only that’s sad, but that’s sad. And I can do something about it, and the Lord may use what I’m going to do about it to at least shake them out of self-deception, but perhaps bring them back into the fold.

Mark Dever:

Now, Alex, just to help some of our listeners here, I noticed you’ve consistently referred to it as a book and Jonathan called it a Colette.

Alex Duke:

It’s so short.

​​How Should Pastors Approach Members Who Won’t Attend Church?

Mark Dever:

Okay, so it’s very short. So a pastor can use this easily.

Alex Duke:

Oh my goodness. You could probably read it in 30 minutes,

Mark Dever:

Not only could the pastor read it in 30 minutes, but this is the kind of thing that’s short enough that you could give it to anybody in your church and say, Hey, look at this when you go home tonight, and let’s talk about it next week.

Alex Duke:

And about a third of it is sort of me telling a personal story. So it’s not very heavy, even for the 44 pages or however long. It’s a pretty light 44 pages.

Mark Dever:

Why don’t you quote the Bible in it?

Alex Duke:

I do.

Mark Dever:

Oh. That’s good.

Alex Duke:

Yeah. Are you about to have your in-note conversation?

Jonathan Leeman:

Look at that. Come on. He’s got a scripture index

Alex Duke:

Scripture index, and a booklet.

Jonathan Leeman:

How many booklets have you seen with a scripture index? That is awesome. I assume everyone that crosses does Psalms, Matthew, Acts One Corinthians, Ephesians one, Timothy Hebrews, and One Peter are the books that you quote from in a mere 52 pages.

Mark Dever:

Alex, thanks for taking the time for this conversation, man.

​​What Should Members Do About Other Members Who Won’t Attend Church?

Jonathan Leeman:

So Mark, answer the question, step one, step two, step three if you can. What should we do about and speak to the pastor and then I kind of want to hear from you, Alex. Okay, well what about, I’m not a pastor, I’m just a member of a church. What do they do? But Mark, just general principles, what do you do?

Mark Dever:

Alright, here we go. We’ll call him Eric, the non-ending member. Yep. Eric, number one, pray for Eric. Number two, attempt to talk to Eric as much as possible. Learn from Eric’s own mouth, why Eric’s not coming. Email, call, text, whatever’s, whatever your generation allows.

Number three, having obtained that information from Eric or having failed to obtain that information from Eric, there are two different paths that come. So there’s a little tree right there. If you failed to obtain any information, that’s a bad sign That sounds like it’s leading to what will finally be excommunication in a few month’s time.

Alex Duke:

If you’re being a ghost

Mark Dever:

Ghosted, as we call it these days, people read their phones

Jonathan Leeman:

And you have an article about disciplining non-ending members, and somebody could see more on that.

Mark Dever:

But depending on what he’s told you, you have a lot of different things you could do. Almost all of them will involve you talking, at least to your fellow elders about Eric’s situation so that they can help bring to bear any relationships they have or other relationships they know he has in the church.

Maybe he’s at home, has been injured at work, or has some health problem, so he needs further help. Maybe he’s moved and he needs a recommendation of a good church or just needed to tell you about that, where he is now.

Alex Duke:

So positive outcome in that case.

Mark Dever:

That’s right. Yeah. Maybe he had a falling out with somebody at church and has just felt awkward and hasn’t wanted to come, and so you helped move him toward resolution in that

Alex Duke:

which may mean he goes to another church, but you’re at least trying to

Mark Dever:

or he comes back to this church, but with some added pastoral help. Sure. Maybe he honestly has never been that well taught, hasn’t been here that long, didn’t know it was that big a deal that he wasn’t coming. So he’s a little surprised and maybe even put off by your having approached him, but now you or whoever Elder might know him best will have a continued ability to engage with him. Maybe there are some big,

Alex Duke:

Maybe he says, shut up, leave me alone, I’m gone. What do you do then?

Mark Dever:

Well, yeah, then maybe there’s some deep dark sin that’s really, he’s using this to mask it or attempt to mask it, in which case you’re probably going to be on a similar trajectory. Is that the first one where he wouldn’t respond at all, although you’ve made some contact with him?

Alex Duke:

Yeah, I mean, so to be clear, the sort of call to arms in this book is, well, in fact, it’s not a call

Mark Dever:

To arms and maybe he turns back up at church next Sunday. I got the privilege of hugging a brother recently who hadn’t been there in some time, and it was great to see him at church yesterday.

Alex Duke:

Yeah. So it’s not a call to go excommunicate all these people, it’s just know the sheep, know what’s

Mark Dever:

Going on in their lives, love them, pray for them.

Alex Duke:

Yeah. One of the things I say is I think the common practice of pastors and churches is to kind of flip Jesus’ parable in Matthew 18 on its head. Well, if 99 sheep are here, well why do I need to care about the one who’s not here, which is the exact opposite lesson. It’s Jesus. And therefore, as followers of Jesus, we should be concerned about the one who’s gone away, even as there are 99 right in front of our faces.

Mark Dever:

Well, I think generally for us today, if there’s one who’s left, he’ll write a big enough check, then we’re fine. We don’t really care that much about the 99. We’ll deal with the one who’s there

Jonathan Leeman:

Too often. Sadly, that may be the case. Okay. What advice do you have, mark just gave us as a pastor what he would do with Eric. What would you as a member do with Eric?

Alex Duke:

I think Mark kind answered as a potential member. I wouldn’t change much. I mean, it’s not terribly complicated. I would just try to.

Mark Dever:

So Jonathan, are there citizens’ arrests? Is that what you’re asking? Can one Shaquil O Neal another member if they’re not attending? Or is that only part of elders’ and shepherd’s work?

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, that’s exactly what I’m trying to draw out. This isn’t just shepherd’s work. This is member’s work.

Congregationalism

Alex Duke:

I smelled a little sneaky congregationalism in there. I would say it’s not just shepherd’s work, but I would say it’s particularly or perhaps uniquely pastor’s work insofar as Hebrews 1317. They will be the ones who give an account for these people who are just doing whatever.

And so again, if you’re a pastor listening to this and there are hundreds, dozen scores, whatever, of people on your roles who never come, then I think you actually have a particular reason to be concerned that Joe Schmo and Jill Schmo members don’t have. That should maybe, I’m not sure it should keep you up at night, but you should at least think about it.

Jonathan Leeman:

So the big structural level you want to make your church members lists, honest as I’ve heard you say, Mark, and you were describing a few minutes ago, Alex. And so that means potentially cleaning roles in some form or fashion and going back and listening to previous conversations we’ve had about how to do that.

And then personally, I’m doing that kind of work. Are there certain individuals who aren’t neglecting to forsake the assembling of themselves together? That is to say, the biblical command, even though they aren’t coming.

When is Not Attending Church Acceptable?

Mark Dever:

Yes, definitely. Who? Alex? I bet we can make a long list. Why don’t we take turns naming people? Let’s see if we can see where the musical chair stops. So I’ll start out if someone physically is not able, one is elderly, or an invalid in some way. You just took a big category. I thought we were going to be more specific. No, no. We’re just trying to save time here. Get right it.

Alex Duke:

Yeah. Overseas in army or military travel.

Mark Dever:

Alright. If you have been stationed overseas in government work, so you’re a foreign service officer and you hope you’ll be able to join the church where you are, but maybe where you are, there’s no existing church.

Alex Duke:

Yeah, we’re running out of

Jonathan Leeman:

Trapped under a refrigerator.

Alex Duke:

Their life will soon be

Jonathan Leeman:

No, they’re okay. Just

Mark Dever:

They’re in a long and messy move.

Alex Duke:

Yeah. Long and messy move.

Mark Dever:

They’re a college student

Alex Duke:

And they don’t live there at the moment. Yeah, a pandemic is going on. You obviously won this mini-game.

Mark Dever:

A pandemic is going on.

Alex Duke:

Yeah, I’d want to ask questions about that, but potentially.

Jonathan Leeman:

Sure. Okay. Okay. And the infirm I get. What about the paramedics whose work requires ’em to work on Sunday?

Alex Duke:

Every Sunday?

Jonathan Leeman:

Every Sunday.

Alex Duke:

Yeah. I mean, this gets a little pastorally complicated

Mark Dever:

Thank them for their work, it’s good and godly work to do.

Jonathan Leeman:

Would you encourage ’em to change their job or look for some sort of arrangement?

Mark Dever:

Maybe find an employer where they don’t work every Sunday?

Alex Duke:

Yeah, I agree with Mark.

Jonathan Leeman:

What about the guy who says his job is to keep nuclear missiles from going off?

Alex Duke:

Is that the president, whose job is that?

Jonathan Leeman:

I don’t know. Somebody with some sort of military-sensitive thing, something that keeps him from coming.

Mark Dever:

Yeah. We have all kinds of military folks doing sensitive jobs and they will go through seasons where they’re absent for one week or three weeks or six weeks, but then they’re back. So there’s going to be some kind of works of mercy and necessity only excluded.

Alex Duke:

So if Kurt Cousins joined your church when he was a member of the Washington football team, he’s not going to be here 16, 18 weeks, but he’d be here the rest of the year. That’d be okay.

Mark Dever:

Probably not for something like football.

Alex Duke:

So wait, why is football not worth missing a Sunday? But being a nuclear whatever for the Marines is, I’m genuinely curious.

Mark Dever:

Well, one would end in human destruction, and the other would be a game.

Alex Duke:

But is he, maybe I do not understand the nature of the nuclear bomb stopper.

Jonathan Leeman:

Let me move this on.

Alex Duke:

We should do a whole episode on that.

Jonathan Leeman:

Yeah, that’d be productive. Okay. What about, I’m going to change it a little bit. What about the person who’s not required to work on Sunday, but they’re picking up the extra shift financially helpful?

Alex Duke:

They shouldn’t be skipping church to make a little bit extra money would be the basic.

Mark Dever:

They might need some help financially when we try to talk to them and understand them more in their situation. Try to give them good counsel.

Changes Pastors Can Make for a Healthier Church

Jonathan Leeman:

Can you speak to the pastor who’s inherited a church culture where church attendance is something that’s been treated as nice but not necessary? How can that pastor start making changes in his church and lead to a healthier place?

Mark Dever:

The two things I said at the beginning teach clearly about the necessity of church attendance. Hebrews 10 other assumptions in the New Testament about Christians gathering and then teach your membership matters class very carefully. So don’t admit members who do not affirm that they will, who do attend, intend to attend regularly. So change how you’re taking in members.

Alex Duke:

And as you do that over time, what becomes normal will just change.

Mark Dever:

That’s right.

Alex Duke:

I mean, it’s like you

Mark Dever:

Go back to the way it used to be in churches.

Alex Duke:

You don’t have to trick people into coming to church. They’ll just realize that’s the normal thing that we do. And so it’ll change

Mark Dever:

If you’re the pastor of an old church, you can go look at the minutes from the 18 hundreds and you’ll see that they were already doing far more than what even the strictest church today would think about doing.

Alex Duke:

Yeah, we just published that article in 9Marks about that, that Caleb wrote.

Jonathan Leeman:

Brothers, any final comments? This has all been very helpful. Any final comments encouraging people and encouraging pastors on how essential this topic is?

Mark Dever:

I think you’ve been an elder in five different churches. Kick us some wisdom, man. What about you? What have you seen?

Be Willing to Have Tough Conversations

Jonathan Leeman:

I’ve seen that these are tough conversations to have. People get a little defensive.

Mark Dever:

They feel like you’re in their business wrongly.

Jonathan Leeman:

And I think a pastor can be too aggressive, but I think that’s probably not most of our problems. I think most of us need to be willing to have some of these tough conversations.

Mark Dever:

It often seems to expose some difficult pastoral situations, even apart from the non-attendance. In other words

Alex Duke:

It’s not isolated.

Mark Dever:

No, exactly. It’s climbing into others, it’s a symptom of something else going on in their life.

Alex Duke:

Yeah. Why are you not here? Oh, I had a fight with that person. You have a fight with that person and then suddenly you’re in a descending staircase of conversations.

Jonathan Leeman:

I think that can be true. In the past, that’s been true, but the worst Christians have been taught. And the more Internet church is taken for granted

Mark Dever:

Worship virtually,

Jonathan Leeman:

The less that’s true. It may just be you’ve been poorly taught. And I think that’s why it’s critical for us to be talking about it and to be

Mark Dever:

Especially for pastors to understand if pastors don’t understand this, nobody’s going to understand this.

Jonathan Leeman:

Exactly.

Mark Dever:

Pastor, make sure your fellow elders understand this. Pastor, have you ever had a conversation with your elders where you make every elder speak at an elders meeting and say what they think about the importance of church attendance? That might be a good elders meeting.

Jonathan Leeman:

Any final comments on the live stream?

Mark Dever:

You always end in

Alex Duke:

Livestream.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, I mean, this is saying that strikes me as a structural thing that’s popular and taken for granted right now. That works against the very thing we’re talking about. And it’s not in my notes, but it occurred to me.

Alex Duke:

Are you asking if that says something? Are you asking if that’s a substitute for like, oh, I am not there physically, but I’m able to watch a live stream, and that is sufficient?

Jonathan Leeman:

Good theologically intelligent pastor, friends of mine out there would make the case that livestream is okay. And I know we can’t have a call conversation right now. Do you think I’m just looking to register this is part of it. Any thoughts on that?

Alex Duke:

I would say maybe it’s okay. That’s a big long conversation, but I certainly don’t think if that’s all the person is doing, it is sufficient by itself to meet the criteria of what it means to be a member of a church.

So again, if you understand what a church is, watching it on your couch, on your laptop, watching an hour and a half sermon songs, et cetera, it will seem obvious that that is not vital to church membership. And so I think the more that understanding of the church is kind of bought in through the congregation, I think the easier those calls will be.

Mark Dever:

Watching a marriage on a cam show doesn’t make me a married man.

Jonathan Leeman:

No, that’s right. Jesus means for the church to be actually visible

Mark Dever:

And actually live, not just the stream, but actually live together.

Jonathan Leeman:

Yeah, that’s right.

Mark Dever:

In the same space.

Jonathan Leeman:

Alex, thank you for writing this booklet. And pastors, I’d encourage you to have a stack of these to give out and circulate in your church along with any other church questions, and booklets. But this one I think is an essential one. So again, thanks for your work.

Alex Duke:

Well, thank you, guys, for your work as a longtime listener, Pastor’s Talk, I’m genuinely thankful.

Jonathan Leeman:

Is this your first one?

Alex Duke:

Yeah.

Jonathan Leeman:

Are you serious?

Mark Dever:

Yeah.

Alex Duke:

Okay. You should know Alex is the one who usually writes the question. I was not fishing. I genuinely want to thank you brothers for doing this for Mark for five years now. I think so.

Mark Dever:

Seriously it feels like longer.

Alex Duke:

I mean, yes. Ben Lacey is on this staff in part, or your staff in part because he started listening to pastors talk way back when, and it was sort of tweaking his understanding of the church before he met any of us. So the Lord has done wonderful work for the conversations that you guys have, and so I’m just genuinely filled with gratitude that we do it.

Mark Dever:

Thank you.

Jonathan Leeman:

Andy’s put Ben Lacey on our staff.

Alex Duke:

Yeah.

Jonathan Leeman:

And listener. A lot of what you’ve heard over the years has been coming from Alex. So thank you, brother.

Mark Dever:

That’s alexduke@alexdukes.com.

Jonathan Leeman:

You can also hear him at Bible talk.

Mark Dever:

Yeah. Which you should listen to, says Jonathan Leeman. That’s right. All right, See you guys.