Season 2 Episode 14: Church Discipline

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On this week's episode, we discuss the importance of church discipline.

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Transcript

Zach Leonard 0:01

Church discipline is not a dirty chore. It's an imitation of the Father's own relentless pursuit of us. It's the gospel in action. Welcome to the Small Town Church Podcast, the weekly podcast where we discuss all aspects of being in a small town church. Whether you are a member on staff or have just begun attending a church in a small town, this is the podcast for you. Welcome back to the Small Town Church Podcast. We are back for episode 14. Um, that's crazy. And we are we're glad that you are here. If you listened to the end of our last episode um about uh conflict, I'm going to just tell you that episode was actually recorded the same day. Um we batch record a lot of these episodes, and for some unknown reason, this room has decided to become cacophonous. I don't understand why. We we've recorded a bunch of our episodes. This is my office at the church. We've recorded a bunch of our episodes with the exact same um equipment, and now all of a sudden things are squeaking and things are making noises. So this is these episodes that you're going to hear are going to have some real life, real world sounds in them, and that's fine. This is the Small Town Church Podcast, the church, the podcast each week where we just talk about being in a small town church. I am one half of the co-host team, Zach Leonard. And as always, I've been joined by my co-host extraordinaire Brad Borgren. Brad, how are we? Doing good. Good. Um, thanks for having me. Yeah, and um, it's it's funny now that y'all know that we're batch recording, I just said hello to him after recording an episode 10 minutes ago. Okay, anyways, but that's fine. It's it's all good, it's all good. We're back and better than ever. So um this week we're doing kind of part two on the conflict, if you will. Uh we almost I we thought about it. We almost um we weren't sure what the copyright things on this would be, but we almost decided to add the uh like the Imperial March from Star Wars, you know, the the whole Darth Vader theme, if you will, to this, because this is the topic no one ever wants to talk about, and that's church discipline. We love to talk about unity, we love to talk about God's love, we love to talk about bringing the gospel to the nations, and those are caring for the needy, the sick, the poor. Those are all great things, and those are all absolutely what we're called to do. But we're not on the eternity side of eternity, which means we're going to encounter broken human beings that are making mistakes, and we need to know how to handle it as a church because the church is Christ's bride, and she must remain pure, and we must do everything in our power to maintain that purity by God's grace. And so there are going to be some times where you have to call someone out in their sin. Hopefully, repentance comes. Hopefully, you get back to unity. Everything's through the idea of unity, but it may come to the fact where you may have to ask somebody to leave the church. And so we want to talk through what the biblical standpoint of that is. Because the Bible does pretty well make it clear. There's not a there are things that we just that we don't understand in the Bible. There are some things that are not clear. This is one of those things that's pretty clear. Now, what's not clear is the severity of the sin and what how severe the sin is that leads to expulsion, if you will. Um that that's that's going to be something that is prayerful consideration by the church. I can tell you 200 years ago, they were they were sending people packing for missing more than three Sundays. Um, if you've ever read Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Mark Dever gets into that in his church in his book and how he was reading through the records of of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, and there were some there were some things they sent people packing for that I mean were were not necessarily bad things, but by our today standards in the 21st century, be like dead gum. That like, wow, uh you know what seem that seems minuscule even though it is important, right? Um so Brad, I'm gonna kick it over to you. Why don't you just give us the skinny on church discipline, if you will. You know, talk about um talk about everything that needs to go out there, just you just lay it all out there like the subject matter expert that you are, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Uh yeah, not an expert, but yeah, it the Matthew 18 pass it, it's not a hard passage to understand, right? And so I think the question we have to ask ourselves is are we addressing sin in our church, right? That that we can't be naive and think that and I'm talking not as to pastors, but I'm talking to every believer. Like our talk about our responsibility in a little bit, but but because we are human and because we still battle the flesh, like there's going to be sin in our lives, and therefore there's going to be sin in our church. And so we have the opportunity to either ignore it or to handle it properly, right? And and I think some of the ways that we handle it badly, like we we ignore it uh or we weaponize it, right? Those tend to be the two extremes. Like, oh, I'm so-and-so did this. Now I've got something that I can throw in their face or that I can go gossip about, or and and we weaponize it, or we're like, oh, that's not that big of a deal, uh, and we ignore it to the point that we become desensitized to the danger that our sin is causing. And so obviously, Jesus is trying to correct us from both of these and and I'm sure many more uh pitfalls, and then thinking through, like, first understanding that hey, we have a responsibility as believers to do this. This isn't just for pastors, this isn't just for deacons. This is if you are a church member, uh, we have the opportunity and the responsibility uh to really judge sin. And and that sounds weird in our culture, right? Because we're like, oh, thou shalt not judge is uh thrown around like crazy.

Zach Leonard 6:11

Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Yeah, judge not lest you be judged, right? And and but at the same time, like we are as believers, we are called to hold one another accountable. Amen. A tree is known by its fruit that if that if I'm claiming to be a Christian and living like a child of hell, like somebody in the church should call me on that. That it's your responsibility to judge that sin in my life.

Zach Leonard 6:38

And um If I could jump in for just one quick second, I I would just say real quickly, to your point, we don't want it to just be pastors and elders. Because that creates a power vacuum. You never want your pastor being the only person ever kicking someone out of the church, because then you then that pendulum swings real hard the other direction and you end up with almost a dictatorship. There's an accountability nature in this, knowing that the body of Christ is going to be working together for the body of Christ. And I think that's important to know. That's I just wanted to throw that in there real quick.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

No, and and that goes to what I was gonna say next. Looking at that, the Matthew 18, 15 to 20, uh, that there's four commands in there, right? The first one's go tell them their fault. Like if your brother sins or when your brother sins, go tell them their fault. So that's it, that's implying that Zach, if I sin against you and you're hurt by something that I did, whether I did it knowingly or unknowingly, it's your responsibility to come tell me. Amen. Not the pastor. Don't go tell the pastor, don't go tell the wives. No, you, whoever was offended, go to the offender, right? Uh that's the first one. The second one, now if they don't listen to you one-on-one, then take someone else with you. And that could be the pastor at that point, but it doesn't necessarily have to be, right? Take somebody that's either uh that you trust, take somebody ideally that the person you're going to would trust. Amen. Right. You don't want to, you don't want it to seem like, oh, I'm just going to get my buddies that that are always on my side. Like, no, go get their buddies, go get somebody that sides with them. That's good. Uh to think, hey, we the goal is restoration. Right. Right. And then it's really step three. Like, I in a perfect scenario, and in Jesus' model here, like the pastor should never hear of it until step three, right? Go one-on-one. If they agree, you've won your brother, right? Or you've won your sister. If they don't, take somebody else, take another trusted brother or sister. Now, if they listen to both of you, great, you've won your brother. If they don't, now we bring it before the church, right? And so that's that's where we need to bring in the pastor. That's where we need to bring in and and and to get his opinion on okay, does this um is this sin serious enough that we need to take it before the entire church? Right. Or is it something that you know we could try to handle again in a smaller group with you know trusted people? Uh but really that's the first time the pastor should hear of it. And then the last command, and so that that third one, tell the church, um and then the fourth command is the hard one, right? To let him be. Uh let him be like a gentile and a tax collector, right? If if they don't listen to you one-on-one, if they don't listen to two, if they don't listen even to the church, Jesus says to let them be like an outside, an unbeliever, right? Uh now we know we're gentiles sitting here. I bet everybody listening to this podcast is a gentile. Like, he's not saying um, we know Matthew, who wrote this, was a tax collector. Right. But Matthew's writing this uh to a Jewish audience understanding, like, hey, Gentiles and tax collectors are pretty much the worst of the worst. They would have had a cultural significance, right? And so he's saying, let them be like unbelievers, right? Let them be cast out. That they may say that I'm a I'm a child of God, I I've trusted Christ as Savior, but they've had three opportunities to show some level of repentance and remorse and obedience to the gospel, and they've it's three strikes you're out, right? That you know, it and Jesus is saying, okay, let them be like an outsider. Of course, you go to First Corinthians, where it happened, like Paul took it literally, right? With the guy and uh that was having an affair with was it his mom or his stepmom? Yeah, I think it was his stepmom. Stepmom, he's like his father's wife is all the time. Yeah, father's wife. That he's like, even even the wicked culture that we live in would not tolerate such behavior. Like, why are you tolerating this within the church? Right, right. And and it doesn't talk about Paul going one-on-one or two on one, but it it does clearly bring in the fact that he brought it before the whole church and he's telling them, like, look, you need to handle this before I come, and let this person be like an outsider, let him hand him over to Satan, he says, for the destruction of his flesh, so that his soul will be saved, right? That that that end goal, even we think, oh, once we get to that, we don't, as Baptists, we don't really excommunicate people, or we don't use that term, right? We that's a Catholic term, right? We're like, man, if we get to that point, then there's no more hope for salvation. I'm like, no, there's quite the opposite idea. The goal in that is still restoration. Yep. Whether you go one-on-one, two-on-one before the church, or you cast them out, the goal is always restoration. Um I don't know if you want to jump in, I've got some more here, but just before you go through that, I'll I'll I'll say this.

Zach Leonard 12:06

One, there's there's kind of two different things that I want to throw out there. The first is that on the pastor side of things, having these steps also helps the pastor in not having to hear about every single tiny thing going on in your church. You know, I think I think about Exodus 18, where Jethro comes before Moses and says, and I'm paraphrasing here, bro, like you know, like you are hearing too many cases. You are judging all of Israel's cases by yourself, and you're gonna run yourself into the dirt. Split it up between judges and have the smaller cases be adjudicated there. And if it rises to the level of being something you need to hear about, then okay, great. That at that point, that's good. Right. There's some wisdom in that, even in church discipline. You know, yes, your pastor, it doesn't mean that your pastor doesn't care about the the little things. What it means is is that if you're constantly inundating your pastor with the little things, that's going to cause division in the church between the church and the pastor. If he's having to hear, I mean, he's gonna obviously I'm sorry, but when my children are having one of those days that they're just bickering nonstop, I have to check my spirit at the door. Otherwise, I'm thinking, man, my kids, oh, these kids, right? And I've got great kids. Like I really and truly, and I'm not just saying that because I'm their dad, um my children really are such a gift from God and they're amazing. But everybody's got broken days, right? And on those days where they're bickering at each other over the little bitty things, it tests my spirit because it's so hard. And if your pastor is constantly hearing little bitty minute things all the time, then we need to um we need to understand that's gonna wear on him. Yeah. And and it's okay to think about the humanity of your pastor from time to time. Um the the next thing that I would throw out there is in regard to when when we are going through this process, I I th when we when it talks about handing someone over to Satan, sorry, excuse me, that's why I shouldn't drink sparkling water while I'm recording um all the bubbles. When when we when we think about you know handing someone over to Satan and kicking them out of the church to use a harsher term, uh think about yourself if and if you had a horrible childhood, uh this may be a really bad example, and I apologize ahead of time, but I'm just going for someone who may have grown up with a a parent who practiced godly discipline. While doing the right thing so you don't get a spanking or you don't get uh punished in some way, you don't get um, you know, timeout or whatever it is your parents' preferred form of judge, that's not a the right reason to do something good. It doesn't hurt. Like, I mean, you know, like like yes, you don't want to accept Christ just so you don't go to hell, but going to heaven's not a bad thing, right? You know what you know what I mean? And so there is an aspect to that. And so if you are in a church that is practicing godly discipline, it's gonna check your spirit on whether or not you're going to commit that sin when you think, oh man, I've got this whole congregation of people that, yeah, no, they'll absolutely, I like my church. I like being around them, I like doing fellowship with them, I love them dearly, and you'll start thinking more about your church if you're the type of person who are is being tempted by this sin, if that is a real possibility. If people are just left unchecked to do whatever they want to, they're gonna continue to do whatever they want to. Um, and I can say that from someone who walked in darkness for a long period of time before he became a Christian. If there's nothing there to check you from your sin, you're gonna continue to sin. It's way too easy to give in to Satan. Like we are, I mean, gosh, it it didn't even take that long in the Bible. Like, right? We are we are tempted. And we, if we are not being built up by other believers, we are not in the word, we're not in prayer, and we are not being edified regularly, we're going to fall to sin. And when you have that body of believers around you and you know they're gonna check you on it, there's an inherent kind of added protection there against temptation, knowing that there are other people involved. And so that's one of the reasons why church discipline is such a good thing. We're not just willy lily looking to kick people out. No, we're we're holding them accountable because we know we're all broken sinners and we all need help from time to time in that. Um so Brad, yeah, I'll kick it back over to you and you can kind of continue on with what you were talking about.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Yeah, and on the on the point of not overwhelming the pastor, you know, the the school our kids go to, um our our administrators use this as a way to cut down on gossip, right? That if you have if parents have an issue with teachers or if any another parent in the school, or if you have an issue within the school, what's the normal response? Oh, I'm gonna go tell the principal, right? He's like, No, we're not gonna listen to your case until you've actually gone to the person that you have a problem with. And then if they can't resolve it, then we will step in. Uh, but until you've actually tried to do what the Bible says and go one-on-one, um we're not gonna we're not gonna circumvent God's word. Right. And and I just wonder like what would our churches look like if we did that, right? Even going back to conflict, like if if I don't think like I've never I've never been in a church, I've never been on staff at a church where we've actually had to kick somebody out, right? To to hand them over, to let them be like an outsider. That that's I've I haven't had that experience. Sure. Uh I have had other experience, and and I'll talk about that in just a second, but just the I think if we let scripture do its job, like it would never, it would rarely get to that point. Amen. Right? Uh and even the conflict, like it wouldn't it wouldn't breed into something much bigger. It would get nipped in the bud and and restoration would happen. Um but again, it's it's that it's that check on our spirit that and not really our spirit, it's it's our check on our flesh that our flesh just wants to ignore things or to weapon. Like I'm not a gossip generally. I I I'll just sit there and ignore something before it because it doesn't bother me. Right. That's how I'm wired. Other people don't ignore things and they're they want to weaponize everything. Yep. Uh but again, it's both of those things end in disaster. Uh, but we have to be willing to confront sin with the goal of restoration. And again, that like we talked about last time, uh, beginning with ourselves, beginning with prayer, thinking, okay, am I ready, am I right in this situation? Like, um, am I making a big deal about it, or is this something that really does need to be addressed before it gets worse? And and then making sure, asking the Holy Spirit to to make sure that you are uh as best you can understand uh in the right, um, and then before you move forward. Um But all also he talks about in in that passage the importance of of joining together in prayer, right? That if you are united in uh I forget what's the language, um find it here.

Zach Leonard 20:09

Yeah, that's what I was talking to.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

If you agree, right? If two of you on earth agree about any matter, you know, it will be done for you by my father, right? That that's that's a promise that he's telling us to agree in prayer. And so that's when it becomes like, okay, how do we know uh that whether it's the two of us or the three of us or the entire church, how do we know we're making the right decision? Well, we pray about it, right? We invite the Holy Spirit into this situation that we don't take lightly the possibility that somebody could be kicked out of the church, right? Right, that that's a serious thing. But he does say if if you agree on it, if two or more, and that's you know, that's the that's the verse that everybody takes out of context. Completely out of context. Yeah. When two or three are gathered, or there I am with you, right? And they don't understand that he's talking about church discipline. Right. Like when you when the two of us agree that, hey, what our brother or sister doing is wrong and has to be confronted, there Jesus is with us in agreement. Amen. Uh when the church agrees, hey, what's going on in Corinth is wrong and has to be dealt with, like their Jesus is with them in spirit, and and he's going to side with his word, right? And so with his spirit. Uh and so just man, we've we have the responsibility to confront sin, but we have to do it seeking restoration and we have to do it with prayer, right? That's good. Um Yeah, because otherwise we're gonna get way our our wisdom will fall very far short.

Zach Leonard 21:50

Amen. So I will say this, um, as we kind of start to uh to downhill slope this episode a little bit. Um I don't know why I say that every single episode. I gotta come up with new words. Um you'd think as a seminarian, as many papers as I write, I'd have new words when I speak. No, no, my my vocabulary really comes through my fingertips, not through my mouth. So that's just what you guys get to deal with. When we're looking at this, I think there are some caveats. First, uh, this is something that my wife said to me uh a couple days back. And it could have been last night, I don't know. It everything runs together. My wife, if you've never met her, um, which y'all, if y'all have listened to all of our seasons, you heard her on the Thanksgiving episode. She is much smarter than I am, and and she tends to say things that really sit with me. And one of the things she was talking about was confronting people regarding sin, the first thing you need to do is write it down. Write it down and then read it, and then look at it and go, is this really something that needs confronting? Or is this something that maybe I just need to go and, you know, much like the lawsuit against believers thing that we we talked about, um, maybe this is something that I just need to move on from and forgive. Now there are going to be some that you need to absolutely, you need to go before the person and you need to call them out on it for their sake, not even for your own. Um, it may be if this is an ongoing, reoccurring thing and no one else is calling them on it, you may be the person that needs to step in and say, okay, look, this needs to stop, right? So there's that. Um be be always be peripheral in it. The second caveat that I will say, because we live in a society where people tend to always go to the worst case scenario, I'm going to speak to the people who might be listening that like the gotcha moments, um, that are thinking about the worst-case scenario. What we are not saying is that if someone is in harm, if someone is cheating on their spouse and is unrepentant about it, if someone is physically harming another human being, if there's real danger to someone, or it is a blatant sin, like a big one, you go confront that.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

And the key there is unrepentant, right? And we don't know if they're repentant if we don't confront them.

Zach Leonard 24:06

Right. Um, and and look at the fruit of the situation. I mean, you and and yes, you may that's why you go quietly, right? In it to begin with, because there may be an incident where someone was unfaithful to their wife, and you find out about it a couple months, three, four, or five months after the fact, and they have come together, he has repented, and and what you caught was gossip. And so if you were to air that out before the entire church, now you've got a husband and a wife that are healing together, and you now come in and try to be the savior, if you will. That's why you go to them first, and because the husband and wife may look at you and go, Yeah, no, I've already repented. The husband may wife may be sitting right there, and the wife goes, Yeah, he's already repented, we're seeking counseling, everything's good. Because yes, you weren't necessarily sinned against in that regard, but that that hurts somebody else in the church, and then you go, Oh, okay, cool. How can I pray for you? How can you know, I'm not gonna interfere on this, but I'd love to I'd love to pray for you guys. Um but if if it's something that is unrepentant, it's ongoing, it has not been brought to light, and it is actually harming someone else, you don't necessarily have to be prayerful about it for six months before stepping in, you know. Um what we're talking about in in those sorts of things where it take you take time before going to the person is is this actually a sin worth confronting, or did your feelings get hurt? Um, really and truly, you know, and if your feelings got hurt, you you may just need to, it'll be okay, right? Um, for example, um, and I'm not going to go into it because the person that may be listening and I don't want to give too much away. Um, I got a text a while back that while it was meant as a joke, it wasn't very kind. Um, and it bothered me at first. I played it off, I sent a text back, we laughed about it, we moved on. But I dwelled on it and I and it started to get me up, you know, and I I handled it the wrong way. I'll be real honest with you. I actually talked to a couple trusted people at my church, my wife and another person about it, and I complained about it, almost gossiping now that I think about it, and it was that was the wrong way to handle it. If it really didn't bother me the way I said it didn't bother me, I should have just let it go, right? Um, or I should have said, because I know this man, he's an extremely godly man, and I know he didn't mean it the way it came out. It's entirely possible that he would have been like, Oh, I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings, I was just making a joke, like old, you know, like older men do, right? If I had gone to him, I probably would have gained my brother back. Instead, what I did is I caused division, and maybe as I'm saying this, maybe I need to go find him, find him and apologize to him, even though he doesn't even know. Sorry about that. I'm dealing with allergies, so um Brad, I'm gonna kick it over to you because I'm about to start coughing.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

I I don't know where to go with your story. But okay, I got a little bit of liquid in me.

Zach Leonard 27:05

Well, let's see how this goes. Um for those of y'all that don't know West Texas, it's flat, it's dusty, and the wind always blows. And when the wind kicks up and things are in bloom, I get allergies really bad, and I've got this tickle in the back of my throat that I am fighting like you wouldn't believe right this second. I am sorry. Um, I think I'm okay for 30 seconds. So to finish the story, um, the correct way for me to have handled that situation was to either go to him and say, hey, this really bothered me. What did you mean by it? Like, were you just trying to be mean? What happened? He probably would have apologized, we'd have moved on. Or I should have actually realized it wasn't that big of a deal and let it go. Instead, what I did is I let my own insecurities come into play, and I handled it the wrong way by not going to the person directly. So, what I say in all of that is one, even your hosts aren't perfect, right? We're we're even gonna mess up in this regard. But two, sorry, goodness gracious, y'all. West Texas in the spring. It's a beautiful thing. Um the other thing is we need to understand that unity is the end goal in all of it. In everything that we do, unity should be the end goal. And we need to keep that in mind in in all of it. In in that situation that I was just telling you about, I should have been thinking about unity and all of that. And if it really bothered me that much, I should have gone to him and told him, like, hey, you you mean a lot to me, and he does. He means a lot to me. Um this kind of hurt me the wrong way, and uh more than likely he would have said, Oh, that's my bad, I apologize, you know. Or I should have just checked my own ego at the door and be like, you know what, it's not worth me, you know, all of that, um, and not letting my insecurities get in the way. So, Brad, as we kind of close up this episode, do you have any final thoughts on church discipline, on what to um what to think of when we're doing this? Uh, just kind of just any last parting thoughts as I try not to choke and die over here.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

No, I think that's a good story to end on and and just to remember that like all God's word is equally inspired, right? The the parts that are hard, the parts that um we may neglect to apply or try to go around as many ways as we can to keep from applying, but yet God has given us the responsibility uh in the church to to not let sin grow rampant, right? And uh and and for us, like none of us, hopefully no one in the church want we don't wake up in the morning desiring to be the prodigal son, right? We don't want to get so far deep in the mire of our sin before we realize like, hey, we've lost it and we've gone off the rails and we have to come back. Uh like wouldn't it be better uh for our brother to go to us and say, hey, maybe you shouldn't just take all this money and go waste it, right? Maybe you should invest it or maybe there's a better opportunity uh for you and and to try to cut that off and we'd save each other so much heartache. Amen. We'd save our and and our brothers would save us so much heartache, right? And so just taking that responsibility seriously, but also understanding that um that not always while I've had opportunity to go to people, uh, and and most of the time it it resolves on that one-on-one, right? Uh, but there have been times when it doesn't. And just to uh while I've never had to, you know, let somebody be like a gentile or or kick them out, you know, they've they've kind of decided that on their own, right? They've they haven't responded uh one-on-one or two on one. Uh and then it's just they've they've made that next step easier on on the church, uh, but it's still a burden, right? That uh understanding that that is a possibility and and that's why it's yeah important to be prayerful, um to be united. Like Jesus, we want if we want you in that circle. Right. Yeah, right, absolutely. We're gonna follow your lead on this. Right. Like we don't want to get uh ahead of ourselves, but we want to make sure that the decision that we are coming to is is the right one, right? Yeah, and that we gotta remove our pride to get there.

Zach Leonard 31:32

That's good. Um I don't think that we'll ever get to the point where we ever do merchandise, but if we do, I just came up with a t-shirt idea, and that is um God is great and people are crazy, so trust in him or something along those lines, right? So it That's a country song. Yeah, it is a country song. Um yeah, I left out the other part. Um, but that's fine. Uh if you don't listen to country, I can Google it. It's fine. As we close out this episode, we're so thankful that you listen to these episodes. Um choking co-hosts at all. Um, we're appreciative that you you listen in each week and that you uh you invite us into your your trucks or your living rooms or wherever it is that you listen. If you're running on the treadmill, hopefully we keep you motivated. Um but we just we just thank you for your listenership. We love these conversations. Um Brad is a dear friend of mine, and I enjoy the ability to get together with him. So thanks for keeping giving to me reasons to force him to come hang out with me. Um so we uh we we appreciate that. If you have any questions, if you want to keep the comment uh the conversation going, or you have any prayer requests, you can either email us at thesmalltownpod at gmail.com or you can comment on our episodes, and we will do our best to answer them either in an episode or we would love to have a question and answer episode at the end of the season. We didn't have one in season one. I mean, we're still a small podcast, so there wasn't enough people to ask questions. Um the only people that were asking questions was my wife, and he she was asking me at home, and so I just answered him. Um maybe that I maybe uh I probably took away from her because Brad didn't wasn't able to give his his wisdom to her um in how he would have answered him. So that's Becca, I apologize. Um maybe, maybe I'll just I'll have him call in the next time you have answers or questions. But we we do. We thank you for your listenership, we appreciate it, and uh, and we we will see you again next week on the Small Town Church Podcast. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Small Town Church Podcast. We pray that you have found this episode useful. If this episode has blessed you in some way, please share with someone else who might benefit from it. If you would like to partner with us, leave us a review so the algorithm can share this podcast with other people. If you have a question, please email it to thesmalltownpod at gmail.com, and we will do our best to answer it either in a later episode or in the QA episode at the end of the season. Also, if we can partner with you in prayer in any way, email us so that we may have the honor of joining you in that prayer. Until next time, we pray you delight in God's mercies, which are new every morning, and remember to stay faithful to your small town church.