The Neighborhood Church, Bentonville, AR

The Reformation: Exploring the Five Solas and the split from the Catholic Church

• theneighborhood.church • Season 2025 • Episode 18

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Explore the transformative moment in Christian history that reshaped theological understanding forever: the Reformation in 1517. 

In this episode of the TNC Podcast, Pastor Joe, Tom Helmich, Tevo Christmann, and Roseann Bowlin dive into the Reformation, examining Martin Luther's groundbreaking challenges to the Catholic Church and the emergence of the five solas that fundamentally altered Christian doctrine.

Drawing from historical insights and theological scholarship, we trace the origins of Protestant (not Catholic) thought, discussing how Luther's 95 Theses sparked a movement that democratized faith and scripture. 

Our conversation references the comprehensive podcast "Here We Stand" (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/here-we-stand/id1288434187), which is a 31-day walk through the Reformation.

Join us as we unpack the Five Solas: sola scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, sola gratia, and soli Deo gloria, offering listeners a rich, educational exploration of how one monk's theological insights revolutionized Christianity. 

This is a church history education...if you love history, you'll love this!

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Pastor Joe Liles:

Uh, All right, welcome to the TNC podcast. We are recorded in studio in the worship center at the neighborhood church, and we have a full house today. Um, all four of us returned to the podcast table. Is this the first time that all four of us have been on since you returned? Indeed, indeed. That is true indeed. So this is all of your podcast hosts. So we have all the way to my right, sitting over here, Director of worship table next to him, incoming pastor of care and education at the neighborhood Church, the one and the only Tom every week, you look at me like you don't know what's happening next, waiting for your it's

Tom Helmich:

so so, because all my time in this church, like that title sounds way too like professional Oh, I don't mind, because it doesn't feel real to me like it you could be talking about somebody. Talking about

Tevo Christmann:

somebody. I'm just looking for a more unprofessional,

Pastor Joe Liles:

professional pastor of the study thing. I'm

Tom Helmich:

just used to being a volunteer, you know, yeah, that's true. And you've got table, you know, like the director of musical experiences, and then, yeah, you know, herder cats,

Tevo Christmann:

you get to make up your own title. We

Pastor Joe Liles:

should have an official title that's going to go on to the call paperwork, right? So that way the ELCA still loves us, right? Because they love official things. And then we can put, like, parentheses or something below that, or maybe an asterisk, right? Can go below that, yeah, yeah. Okay, that'd be great. So we'll come up with that. If you have a title for Tom, go ahead and share,

Tevo Christmann:

Director of hanging out and

Tom Helmich:

smoke. Yeah, man,

Pastor Joe Liles:

I'll go to youth any night you smoke. Britain. Smoke brisket. That'll be wonderful. That'll be wonderful. All right? And then next to me on my left, and we're gonna have a new segment today, the one, the only, who is it? Roseanne. Roseanne and Roseanne, you came to me earlier saying that you were excited for the podcast. We were walking over here to the building, coming over from a meeting with little neighbors preschool, and you said, All right, we're getting ready for the podcast. And said, Yep. And then you said, you have what notes? You have notes. I made notes. You made notes specifically for the podcast. Well, because

Roseann Bowlin:

of the Reformation and all the really good stuff that's in here, it's not just because

Pastor Joe Liles:

it's great. So we're gonna start a new segment today that'll happen at some point during this podcast. We just decided that we can call it Roseanne notes, and it'll be a live kind of a note taking session from the message, and so we can hear that. Did you introduce yourself? Who you are? Oh, no, I haven't introduced myself. My name is Joe Liles, pastor of the neighborhood church. Planted the church back in 2012 and so we've been going all the way through to now, and just received in an exciting way our 10 year anniversary of the neighborhood church certificate of being a chartered, of being a chartered and organized, which just is, like, you really, like, 10 years. There's so much before that. There was so much, there's four years in addition that, and then four years of seminary before that. So, yeah, it's one of those where I want a couple more years on that. There should be an asterisk. It's like, with little princess, it says. But really, since 2012 you know, like it's been a little bit longer. So we'll talk about what that means in a second. But before we do that, we always open the podcast with a, Jing, A, one,

Tevo Christmann:

a, two, A, one or 2479367, 2285, neighborhood

Pastor Joe Liles:

church. Nice job. Well done. That was great. That was great. So we're going to break into it today. We're in our series on church shopping, and we're the second week in the series, and we're going through the years of the church. So we started in year 100 and week one of the series that went through the early church, that is really the church, kind of like after Christ year 33 through 100 and that's kind of the years when the gospel was written that's years when these communities of faith are forming all around Asia, minor and different things. That is the the kind of journey of Paul as he's kind of moving throughout and other kind of missionaries that went out and planted these communities, and then you really have the church from 100 to 300 which is persecuted, and so they kind of descend back into the catacombs and into the homes and different things like that. Um, as they're trying to understand what is this Christian reality in the midst of the pagan identity of the government at that time. And so that was the early church. And then this last week, we moved into the 1500s right? And we talked through the Reformation. The Reformation in the Lutheran church is a huge, huge church history moment, because it literally started the Protestant denominations are Protestant reality. And the Protestant reality, if you've not heard of the word Protestant before, Protestant means protest.

Tom Helmich:

And Protestant the ones who protest against the stuff going on with Roman Catholicism. I

Unknown:

love it, not Catholic. It means not

Pastor Joe Liles:

it means not Catholic, yeah. And I love that, because it does come from the word protest, right? And they were protesting Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, the state parts of it. Yeah, correct, yeah, not all of it, but state run Catholic Church. And so you have this kind of year in 1500 that we have this kind of split of the church. And the church splits due to, really, Martin Luther right, having some questions or really more statements about the theology of the church, and how they're presenting that theology to the people of the church, right, and what they were saying about that, and specifically for the sale of indulgences. So we're going to get into a little bit of church history. But Tom I was wondering, can you share a little bit about the church history of the Reformation being such a fresh seminar? A grad, right? What is the Reformation? Give us a little bit. So it started

Tom Helmich:

before Martin Luther, that's correct. There's for a while. Well, I think last year, there was a podcast that came out was 30 days, and each day was a different like, reformation, character, person. And that podcast went down for like 30 minutes talking about that one person.

Tevo Christmann:

Yeah,

Tom Helmich:

my podcast, it was neat because it went through a bunch of people you don't normally hear about, okay? And it was beyond, you know, there was no Lutheranism, right? Everything was just Catholic or Orthodox, because that split happened way before 500 years, yeah, 500 years before that was around 1000 Yep, and, but the it's the Protestant Reformation surrounded around the split from Catholicism. But there was like booster and Hus and splint Lee and Calvin, all these people going on, Erasmus, all these, all these people talking about these things, but with a little bit more maybe. And as a Lutheran, I can say this social intelligence and maybe a little more self preservation instinct is true, how you know, doing things in a way that is not obtuse in how they communicate. And then here comes Luther, who had no filter, yeah, I agree, and didn't really worry about things, plus a little bit of it was even outside of Luther, because he he wrote these things for a conversation at higher education, you know, situation, right, in a college. And somebody thought, this is really great. We should publish this. And they did, and it got broadcast far and wide, and kind of blew up beyond Luther. So this could have, you know, very been considered, instead of a Lutheranism, hussianism, or, or, well, there is colonism, or there could have been boosterism, all these different things, but it's centered on things that Luther said, because he really just, like, No, you know, not holding any punches. Just like, very blunt about stuff, and in picking on the the Pope, specifically, yeah, and that kind of that just that just blew up, and it fragmented from there. And unfortunately, it fragmented to a great degree, which is, well, unfortunately or not, because that's yeah, do what it is, what it is, it is what it is. Yeah, for a while it was, there's about a negativity. It came to us some really sad history that that happened right after the Reformation, but it's what allowed us to have in this country. Now, what we see is all all these different churches, of different church histories, different church traditions. And Nate from Box said this one of his classes. And who's Nate from he's my one he's my advisor, my first advisor, and third advisor, because I got him back. But he said that there's no my advisor, also your advisor, tiring into the semester. He said, There's no such thing as the Lutheran church. There's only one church, the Christian church, and we are part of the Lutheran tradition. I love that. And it's all the Catholic worldwide church, whatever denomination you belong to, is part of the one, the one church. And as belonging to the Lutheran tradition, you know, we have part of that heritage that goes all the way back, back to the beginning, yeah, but, but so do everybody. So does everybody else. You know, we're all Christians. All believe the same thing.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So I love what you said about Martin Luther. And I didn't talk about this on Sundays. This little extra, right? I think Martin Luther, way you describe it, is great, right? He was bolder in that, right? Oh, yeah. He didn't hold back his thoughts. And yeah, booster and Calvin, right? And all these other people that kind of took these notions beyond, right, they continued the language. Very interesting. Couple interesting things. One, they didn't agree with Luther personally, yeah,

Tom Helmich:

issue it opened. It opened up a can of worms. It did. And

Pastor Joe Liles:

what ends up happening is you have all these other people who are Martin Luther adjacent, right? Basically, they knew that there was a key issue in the theology of the Catholic Church, and what was happening at the time Martin Luther named it, put it out there. But Martin Luther also had his own understanding of what it should be. And John Calvin and these other people who are moving it forward also had their own understandings of what that should be. And it got into great and rich theological discussions about how they continued this, I would say, Protestant reality of what does it become? Now, if it's not, and there were

Tom Helmich:

table, I can't remember the name, specifically the ones that came before Luther, like there were other writers before Luther that, that he would have been aware of, that were writing about this. But I can't remember

Tevo Christmann:

who's I know Erasmus in particular was, was someone that they were reading a lot, because that was before, correct, yeah, yeah.

Roseann Bowlin:

But it was an entire movement. Oh, it had been going on form, the church,

Tom Helmich:

Oh, yeah. I assume probably before cat, before Luther was born.

Tevo Christmann:

It was in the air. It was on the water, yeah. I

Tom Helmich:

mean, it never been. I mean, there was always discontent, because it, you know, I mean, even, I mean, since the the Eastern split, you know, there's just, there was always printing

Tevo Christmann:

press. Is what helped it, yeah, go viral. I think, I think Luther was just uniquely placed. And there's a great degree of just happenstance that Luther became what he was. It's a mix of his personality, a mix of the printing press and the fact that he was in Germany and in the particular province of Germany, that there was a particular Prince of that province that was interested in not giving property and money to the church, and so he was quite willing. To take Luther under his wing and protect him from the wars. And so there's a lot of things that conspire together for Luther to emerge as a leader of the Reformation, a prince.

Roseann Bowlin:

It sounds like God had a plan, right?

Tom Helmich:

Well, because it I mean that Prince protected Luther, yeah, otherwise you wouldn't have the like the Luther edition of the Bible, and there was a lot of national stuff going on because the church had become a sociopolitical authority, right? You know, it remains. It's a sovereign nation today. And so there was a little bit of in Germany, of trying to have its own autonomy outside of the papacy in Rome. And so there are all kinds of things that came in together to allow that to happen. Well,

Pastor Joe Liles:

and you get the kind of cataclysmic right, events that are happening there, the printing press is one of them, right? That spread it far and wide. The translation of the Bible during the time when he was considered a heretic, right? And being hid by this prince, right? And having this time to do that, you now have a language that's put back into the people, right? So this is also something that goes beyond Luther, I think, and even that way, translating the Bible, it wasn't a Lutheran translation of the Bible. It was a translation of the Bible. It

Tom Helmich:

was like from a Catholic monk and priest, it 100% into

Roseann Bowlin:

the language of

Pastor Joe Liles:

the people. Yes, and I think that's very that, in and of itself, kind of takes us beyond Luther right? What it did is it allowed people to discover for themselves, right, their relationship with God, something that honestly had not been a reality before them. They wouldn't. They were told what their faith is. And I we even see this in churches today. You'll see a very quick, rooted growth in churches, and I would call it a shallow, rooted growth of pastors who tell people what to believe. People love that, right? Because I don't have to think about it, right? You can tell me what to believe. I'm either in or I'm out. Yeah, so, and it's,

Tom Helmich:

it's a distinct, like a very clear distinction of, oh, well, no, you know, you just don't ask questions. We don't talk about

Roseann Bowlin:

it. Well, how smart are sheep really? Well, yeah, okay, so you have this Shepherd. I'm a sheep. I'm just going along with the shepherd. Yeah,

Tom Helmich:

right, right off the right, off the cliff, if

Pastor Joe Liles:

you're not careful, yeah. Well, that's what happens, right? And so you get this moment where all of a sudden you now have the ability to discern for yourself what this relationship is, and that shifts. Now, I think what you end up having is you have a state run church that was having you pay for indulgences, you start to read in the Scriptures. You see someone of that church questioning a lot of things, and then you start to read it for yourself. And you're like, I I think it's right, like, you start this kind of movement that happens throughout but yeah, what we don't talk about is the wars that started from that, right? These Christian wars that started because of that, and the loss of life there. That's kind of a really dark part of that history that's not brought up with the Reformation. Hey, we translated the Bible. There was a printing press. There was Christian. Was that the Crusades? That was the Crusades, right? The Roman and

Tom Helmich:

the Roman Catholic Church remembers the Reformation in a very different light, because I have friends that are Catholic. He's like, Oh, y'all still like, celebrate that.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, yeah, that's different because

Tom Helmich:

of the story that does, I mean validly, that does, does exist. I think part with Luther too is because of his personality. I don't know if I don't know how to describe I have the word, but I lost it. There's all the mic drop moments right, where a lot of boldness, like, where maybe we're like, Luthers personality, for whatever reason, just didn't really care about consequences. Because, I mean, one particular time he got called to the carpet by arguably the most powerful man in the world, saying, You need to basically apologize and recant that, and he's like, I said what I said, and then they were going to kill him. And that's when I

Tevo Christmann:

bet he wasn't quite as nonchalant. No, no, he

Pastor Joe Liles:

was, yeah, there's a great documentary with

Tom Helmich:

Luther. Oh yeah, it shows that scene. But that's what got communicated out. That's the other side. Is right? You get the all the turmoil and the worry and the concern of him and and being conflicted on it by his conscience, on his faith, yeah, not for the life here and now, but for what his what his faith actually commands of him, which is rare in humanity, because we have a strong self preservation. And that's where you get the you know. And, you know, here I stand kind of comment, you know, like, well, you know, I said, what I said. But then you get all which always happens, an idealized version that goes out again in those, those young college student, kind of age people that their brain isn't fully plugged in, their spinal cord, they have no frontal lobe, no concept of consequences, and they have a printing press, right? And they take probably an idealized version of what happened, great heart.

Tevo Christmann:

William Wallace, yes, like

Pastor Joe Liles:

a revolutionary, right? It's not a reformation. They're looking for revolution, and they

Tom Helmich:

love it. Revolution, and they love it, and they send all that out, and it just kind of blew up. I think he becomes a

Tevo Christmann:

hero. Yeah, correct, yeah. I think, I think one of the things that helped that whole era, or that whole situation, was not a lot of people were fully literate at the time, right? And one of the main arguments of the Reformers was, show me from scripture, right? I mean, Luther said it, Calvin said it, Zwingli said it. They all in public debates. And public debates at that time wasn't just a scholarly affair, yeah, because the church and the state were connected together. So there were real life this. Decisions about the politics of wherever they were, like, should we pay tithes to the state? It matters to everyone. And so these public debates were big deals. And they would say, they would say, Well, show me from scripture where it says that you should do that, yeah, and at that time, well, nobody's read scripture, I don't know. And even the the Catholic debater debaters that were there, they weren't fully prepared to answer those questions. They were like, I've never thought like this before, so I don't know how to show you from scripture this or that. And

Tom Helmich:

now we have sola scriptura. And now we have sola scriptura because the big difference at the time, and even to some degree now, between the Roman Catholic tradition of the church and the Lutheran tradition of the church is where does authority come from? And we set comes from Scripture. In a lot of Roman Catholicism circles, it comes from Scripture and tradition, correct? Which is set by people. You can have traditions, which is fine, but they're not authoritative. That's why we get to that. I can't remember the fancy word, the audiophra, right? It's okay, but it's not authoritative. But in the Roman Catholic church at the time, it was authoritative, and Luther is like no, the only authority comes from God's word that we have in in Scripture. And

Pastor Joe Liles:

Luther challenged authority consistently, right? I mean, and I think he questioned authority consistently, but he also took the traditions, and if he didn't abide by traditions or see the value of them. He didn't live into them, right? Part of those is that he was a monk, right? And monks and priests at the time celibate, right? And also not in relationship. And he didn't think that was right. He didn't think, I mean, he said this in the 1500s priest should not be celibate, right?

Tom Helmich:

Real, because he knew that the church tradition or the church history, that that wasn't always the case in Roman Catholicism, and with one particular Pope, it became standardized. But he's like, Okay, show me in Scripture. Yeah, correct, and it's not there. And that really, I think, ticked off the pope when he got married to a former runaway nun. Yeah, he

Pastor Joe Liles:

got married to a nun. So just put that out there. Not only

Tevo Christmann:

fool on the nose, isn't

Pastor Joe Liles:

it? Not only did you get married like, you're like, I'm gonna marry which nun who also

Tevo Christmann:

said, find a nice peasant lady somewhere, which,

Tom Helmich:

having read a lot of of Luther stuff, I kind of would, I would not be surprised if somebody told me, yeah, he sent the pope an invitation to the wedding. Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it, because some of the stuff he said was very like, if you read it in a slightly more modern version of the wording, you're like, oh, and

Tevo Christmann:

he was kind of a potty mouth, too. Oh, yeah, instrumental. Whole lot, yes,

Tom Helmich:

yeah. And at one point, at one point, he wrote one of the confessions, and he addressed it to the Pope, and had a copy sent to the Pope, and in there, he talked about that, if the devil himself were to try to screw up the church, he could do no more than the papacy. Yeah. And I'm like, Oh, you just said that he's worse than the devil. I'm like, that's not a good idea, yeah, even

Tevo Christmann:

there's, there's a great deal of tragedy on all this too. It's on the hero. It's not all heroics, because the Reformation wasn't a perfect movement. I mean, Luther, let's just, you know, the cat out of the bag. Luther, later on, was very, very mean to say the least, to Anabaptists and to Jews as well. Calvin was, I mean, because church and politics were together and so on his recommendation, yeah, people were burned at the stake. Right Zwingli said of his own, of his own, Felix Mons, his own fellow reformer who wanted to reform a little further than he did by Re baptizing. And he said, Well, if he wants to be baptized, so much, let him drown. And that's how feelings bonds. So it was not perfect, and so much of it is the Catholic Church wasn't ready to respond to all of these things. The Counter Reformation movement was, had to pick had to do a lot of work to pick it all up. And then eventually ended up in the Council of Trent, where they spent 20 years working out what they actually believe about justification and all of these things, because nobody had read it. Nobody had read it. Yeah, so it would it would be amazing had all of these things been worked out within the church, and the church achieved a unified better situation than it did. But that's not how it happened. And I mean, that's not even in our lives, in the in the life of the story of people Israel, you know, like God is at work through all of these things, even though it's very through very imperfect line, but icky, but it's, but it's, I think, I don't know if everyone shares this sentiment, but I I do of this hope, of the the reunification of the church eventually, one day, probably not in any of our lifetimes, right? But we can rift is so big, we can hope, but we but we can hope for. I mean, because it says, the Bible says that Jesus is preparing her bride to be presented immaculate, and it's difficult to imagine, uh, this fragmented bride to pieces, yeah? So there's, there's a lot of hope, because,

Tom Helmich:

and probably the issue with the Roman Catholic Church being such a political authority is, once the Reformation kicked off, it created a leadership governmental void, an authority void. Yeah, much like if you go to and the US has done. Us, unfortunately, go to a country and remove the government without putting another one in there. And then you get mass chaos and anarchy, which is as soon as people start to turn against the Catholic Church, which had so much of a role in politics, it created that void. And you got these little which is when, part of when, when Luther first started stepping up and advocating for the use of violence to try to get control again, if it had happened in a council that which like the like the Roman Catholic Church has done since, Yeah, correct. You know, then it could have all been, all been avoided, but it just become very uncivil. I mean, I

Pastor Joe Liles:

think this is where we get to the place that Luther didn't want to start Lutheran, yeah, right. That was never the reality, right? So to say that the Reformation was started because he wanted to name a denomination outside of Catholicism after himself. I don't think was ever the

Tom Helmich:

character, because he didn't, he didn't name it. It was a derogatory thing. Yeah,

Pastor Joe Liles:

correct from right there, Luther, right. Yeah, those are those. Luther follow. Luther, right? And so, but now, I mean, you get this from the Protestant Reformation. You get these Protestant mainline denominations, right? And it's going to be your Methodist and your episcopals, right, and your different things like that that were started honestly by other reformers after Luther also, and you get your Anabaptists and these different things like this that all start to descend from this one moment. And I was thinking about this the other day. The distinction that we make now and distinguishing ourselves from other denominations is so loosely understood by the common people outside of seminary that really you're choosing based on what other people have said about another church that you don't even know if their theology aligns with the denomination that they're representing, right? Like so and so goes to this church in our community. So because they go to this church and it has the name Lutheran or Methodist or Baptist next to it, that is all Baptist. And you're like, Oh, wow. Like, not the reality,

Tom Helmich:

or we make distinctions to try to not be somebody else. Like a lot of people, like, well, they won't use certain words because, Oh, it's too Catholic. It's like, well, but it's still the church. Yeah, yeah, you know. Now, how about because of this element of theology? Yeah, you know. Because I don't agree with that, you know. Okay? Because if, if, if it had gone more peacefully, I think if Luther had his way, when young Luther, it probably still be just the Catholic Church, just the church. Yeah,

Pastor Joe Liles:

I love this idea that the church can once again become the local church, right? I really love, and have continued to love. And in fact, I remember when we first started the neighborhood, we are trying to partner with other Lutheran churches. So like, imagine that the local church starts with, like, trying to partner with your siloed Lutheran churches and then extend beyond that, right? And we called a position that we made up to share children's ministry, the children's ministry area coordinator, which was the C Mac, right? And we called it the C Mac. And the Mac, C Mac would go out to all these congregations and serve in these multiple roles. And the intention of that, from the start of our ministry at the neighborhood was to combine the local church, was to make sure that we saw what the width and breadth of the local church can be. And that extends beyond into our other partners, even in the Lutheran church and Missouri Senate, and then the Wisconsin Senate, and having these other churches before and then to our really communal partners of the Presbyterians and the Methodists and the episcopals, and then beyond that, to the other local church identities here, where we can all serve together for the needs of the people. And I do love that idea that one day the church will reform as a local church, as the, you know, the kingdom on earth, right, that we call that's here that's not so segmented in ways that we don't even understand anymore, right, in ways that aren't known. I even thought that next year would be great to do a series on like, how are we different than Baptist, and how are we different than Methodist, and what does that truly mean? Not as hey, you should be Lutheran, but as in a hey, understand what this means when you're going into the realities of these churches.

Tom Helmich:

Because most people probably realize there are not as many clear distinctions as people think there

Pastor Joe Liles:

are no, oh yeah, no. And honestly, well, there's probably many, many, many clear distinctions, and there's probably one or two cultural distinctions that are being made that distinguish the churches based on conversation, right? And people live into those very key cultural distinctions that are said out loud and not anything else, right? And so very interesting talk through like what the local church is. So we're going to jump into a segment that that's a little bit about the Reformation. The Reformation. So that was in the 1500s the 95 theses was posted in 1517, and just imagine October 31 by the way, October 31 That's right, Halloween. Reformation Day, Reformation Day. All Saints variety, All Saints Day. So we have this really weird like, Halloween is reformation like and sometimes put together. That's why we do chunk or treat. I'm just kidding. It's not. It's just nothing to do with it. Yeah, that's just for fun. Which did

Roseann Bowlin:

he do that on purpose?

Tom Helmich:

I don't think so. Same state, no, I think it's just the way it worked out in the calendar. I really no distinction.

Pastor Joe Liles:

I never heard of any reason

Roseann Bowlin:

why Halloween back then, right? I

Tom Helmich:

don't, you know. I don't know that part of Germany, I doubt it question. I don't know. I don't know about the history well, because it would have been, I may have been all, All Saints Eve, you know, right saints, they wouldn't have been, right, All Hallows Eve, they wouldn't have had, I don't think the tradition we have with Halloween came too much later, because that was organized. They didn't have Reese's Pieces back then. No, that's Reese's peanut

Pastor Joe Liles:

butter cups on.

Roseann Bowlin:

You saw Reese so

Pastor Joe Liles:

much better than the cups.

Tom Helmich:

Oh, no, you gotta have the cups. No. It's always it, and it's we only get into it. That's another topic. But if you, if you read up on how Halloween started, the way it is now, it was very much a law enforcement effort to control kids from tearing stuff up like that's what we know now. Of Halloween is a recent invention.

Pastor Joe Liles:

There's a okay side note. There's a comedian who makes a joke on Reese's Pieces, which I call Reese's Pieces. It's not Reese's Pieces.

Tevo Christmann:

That's like, a horoscope, yeah, yeah,

Pastor Joe Liles:

right, isn't it? Like, yeah, there is yeah something. But he makes a joke that Pisces, did you ever see that Reese's has an apostrophe, and he's like, someone owns those pieces, and it's Reese. And who is Reese? I got lots of pieces. He's got lots of pieces. So if you ever look at it now, you can never unsee it. There's an apostrophe. Someone owns those pieces that you're eating, yeah, and then

Tom Helmich:

someone else or you're eating pieces.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Oh, gosh no, wow. So with that, we're gonna start a new segment that I really love. We're just gonna make it up today and we're gonna see how it goes. This segment is called roseanne's notes. I

Tevo Christmann:

want, yeah, I want two, three. Roseanne,

Pastor Joe Liles:

all right, Roseanne, what are you? Did y'all practice that ahead of

Unknown:

Time's like, I didn't really do that much. You built this up like it

Pastor Joe Liles:

was going to be incredible. Roseanne told

Roseann Bowlin:

you I had it is incredible. It's me.

Tom Helmich:

Hello. We have a new second high priest, the High Priestess. The

Pastor Joe Liles:

High Priestess has notes. Alright, Roseanna, can you share with us your notes from the message that Tom can answer? So, solo scriptura, the solo Scriptura only scripture. Yes. Okay,

Roseann Bowlin:

so my note was, be in the word to deepen your faith and grow closer to God

Pastor Joe Liles:

that, yes, that is really wonderful. I said, if you want to begin kind of, your foundation of faith begins in it with a relationship with God. And if you want to be in that relationship every day, it begins in the Word, and that we should be opening the word every day and going to bed with the word every day, like beginning your day and ending your day with that, as you start and read scripture, so And

Roseann Bowlin:

the scripture was second, Timothy chapter three, verses 16 and 17. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. It's amazing. It's

Pastor Joe Liles:

a wonderful scripture. Can I pause for a moment? Pause as a pastor, I'm deeply, deeply heartfelt towards these notes. We don't often get to hear people's notes from the message right as pastor, and it's wonderful to hear because we we prepare and we preach these messages, right? And we hope that there is something that comes across that you can take away with you. And honestly, like a lot of people, came up on Sunday talking about the history of the church that they did not know about, which was great. I think sometimes we have pastor tunnel vision that because we've learned it and we know it, and we're so infused with it that it's common knowledge. Reformation is not common knowledge. And so Jess even called me. She listened to the message when she was in Minneapolis, and she called she says, you need to do one of those a year, like, just like a breakdown of the history of the church once a year, so that people know what's going on. As it's great. So that's a wonderful note. And yeah, that is sola scriptura. That's absolutely

Roseann Bowlin:

wonderful. So my next note

Pastor Joe Liles:

was wait. Note number

Roseann Bowlin:

two, if you're making fun of me,

Tom Helmich:

create the moment of what is roses. You gotta know that for most of this is gonna be the best part of the whole podcast. No pressure.

Roseann Bowlin:

Well, what I'm impressed is I'm doing this without my glasses. Well, you're

Pastor Joe Liles:

impressed too. We're very impressed. Uh, table it glasses if you don't have glasses,

Tevo Christmann:

yeah, yes. Well, but they look great. By the

Roseann Bowlin:

way. They do look great. So my next note is just justified in God through faith only. And that comes from Romans, chapter one, verses 16 and 17, for I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and and also to the Greek for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith. For faith, as it is written, the one who is righteous will live by faith,

Pastor Joe Liles:

beautiful sola fide, right? That is only faith. And yes, that is justification by faith. This was one of Luthers main points when he was talking through his understanding of grace, right, and the paying for of indulgences and the remission of sins, right, that God is the only one who can forgive our sins, right? It is not under the papal authority. And he said, with God being the only person that can forgive our sins, our response to that is faith, right, that that is our only response that can be a. In this, and that is how he began to understand and really bring together his theology of the cross and theology of grace, which leads us into some of the other Solas that exist there too.

Tevo Christmann:

The sorry, go ahead. The on, on the I just remember on the sola scriptura, we forgot to mention that what sola scriptura means, it doesn't mean just like it doesn't mean you only read the Bible by yourself in your room. It means that Scripture is the final authority over against tradition. But it doesn't mean that you don't listen to tradition, that you don't listen to the church history, that, because, you know, even churches have their own creeds, they have their confessions, we still recite the Apostles Creed, which is not in Scripture. Yeah, nobody's coming. It's built from scripture. But it's built from scripture, it means it has to agree with scripture. Whatever tradition you you subscribe to, has to agree with scripture. So it's only the only final authority over against human tradition, which is the issue they had with the

Roseann Bowlin:

I kind of read in that the study of Scripture and you can't study alone. You

Tevo Christmann:

shouldn't. I mean, you should, but also you should, yeah,

Roseann Bowlin:

bring your questions to someone who is more learned. But that's

Tom Helmich:

and that's some of the downside from the split is, you know, a lot of traditions that don't require training and that. And so I wouldn't say that you have to have to have completed seminary to be able to preach the gospel, but to make a lot of the interpretations it, you know, you need to have had a program of study, to study scripture. You know, for that, for that reason, it helps, it helps to operate in and rest, studied it. You gave

Roseann Bowlin:

a little a little more deeply into the history of it and and where it bubbles up from. And so that's, that's why I can't just read the Bible and go, Okay, I'm done now. Now I can live my life. No, I need to go to someone when I have questions that says, What does it mean? And we did that to you on the trip to Senate Assembly, like, what does it mean when, yeah, and very interesting conversations, I mean,

Pastor Joe Liles:

that's where we go back to the ordination, right? Like, there is a, there is a, still an order to the church, right? That is helpful in teaching and in revealing the scriptures and walking through in discipleship, right? And that ordination comes from, yeah, study, and it comes from understanding the theology and understanding, kind of the traditions of the church, to share those with others. And so I think that even though Luther was against Pope's authority and the papal authority and the priests still understood structure of the church right, and how important that is when we go forward, just not to abuse that power, right? And be the only authority, right? The authority goes back to God, was his major point, goes back into scripture, goes back into faith, being our response to that. That's why these came about. Imagine

Tom Helmich:

a doc, a doc like, say, your appendix is bothering you, right? Yeah. And I like, well, I got a book

Pastor Joe Liles:

appendix, and we've been talking about scripture, and I immediately thought about the appendix. It's like, why would that?

Tom Helmich:

Like, if you like, if you need an append my body, my body, Appendix, if you need an appendectomy, like, Well, I gotta, I got a book here. I'll just read the instruct, all the instructions, and I'll do it for you. Yeah, that doesn't work, you know. Or somebody teaching how to do medicine and teaching something. And this one of the students, like, where's that in the book? Yeah, where's that textbook? Right? You gotta have balance,

Tevo Christmann:

yeah, right. On justification by faith, which is what you said. You said is Martin Luther main thing. And for sure, it definitely is his main thing. And he has, as you guys, maybe can tell the story better of how he was direct with guilt his whole life he could not send he paid the he paid the payment penances he would confess to the priest, and he felt like he was still not forgiven. And so it was meditating on that issue that in reading through Romans, where he had this light bulb moment for him, which is like, Wait, I don't like, I'm I'm not justified because of how much I confessed, or that I confessed enough because what he was like, what if I forgot to confess something? Yes, you know it's like, but I'm justified by faith, through grace, through grace. And that really is kind of the tipping point for him. Really was, yeah,

Tom Helmich:

and that's, you know, Paul, I was for that which I like your reading. I usually go to Ephesians two and I'll, you know, yours, maybe more more gives, gives, more of the, the kind of concept for the more of the, you know, those things surrounding but Paul said in in Ephesians, two, he said, For Grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of work, so that noone may boast. Mm, hmm, you know that which, which you ties right? Ties right into more broadly. And it because that's a big distinction, too, from indulgences, right? It's not because it works.

Pastor Joe Liles:

And actually, that is the foundational verse, right, for sola gratia, right? So my note on that, that's great. Note number three, this is great. We're going to

Roseann Bowlin:

do my note on that is good works are the result of your faith. We receive. Receive this only through God's grace. So it's because I have God's grace that I want to go and do works. I want to volunteer. I want to help someone so and I

Pastor Joe Liles:

love that there's a lot in there too, that you're talking about Ephesians two it says so that no one may boast right, that we don't boast of ourselves right? And it's going to lead us into our last two solas. But that reality was that, and it's kind of off. Luther is like, I can't do anything to affect this change, because I'm a saint and a sinner. There's no way I can confess all my sins continually in order to be remissed from them or forgiven for all of them. So I live into this reality. I also know that I am sanctified by the cross, right? And we have this theology of the cross of what Christ did. And so we have this reality there's really nothing that we can do. And I think we struggle with that. And I was talking to you all about a family situation earlier where I struggled because I felt helpless, because there was nothing I could do right outside of be present and I wanted to activate, and I wanted to solve things, and I wanted to do this, but there's nothing I could do. And so in those moments, you realize that the kind of the tenant of our theology that we rest on this foundation is that, though that is when we understand, again, at the base of all that we are in our Christian reality, that we really go back to God. When we get to the end of ourselves, we go back to God. And what Luther is trying to commit people to is that we don't have to get to the end of ourselves to start with, to go back to God like we will always end there. But why wouldn't we start with that, knowing that that we are at the end of ourselves, right? And that this all goes back to God. And so that's a huge distinction about the grace we made in a little side note, which I'll link to in the show notes, something very interesting we studied in seminary just based on this, as we're talking about justification by faith is called the joint declaration of the doctrine of justification, the JD, DJ, and this is jdj. DJ, could you imagine that a jingle to that? Gosh, that would ruin the whole thing. It is a joint conversation between the Lutheran Catholic dialog about the doctrine of justification and by faith. And so they basically, 500 years later, come back to the table and they say, Hey, let's talk about this again. And it's not so that Catholic Church can recant everything they said. It's a dialog, and it goes through this whole dialog. It's a very interesting, very theological, very seminary read, but also very small. Go into the show notes. Yeah, it's

Tom Helmich:

also, like, one of the thinnest books I ever got in seminary. Yeah, it's great. Like, there's just not, you know, like, there's not that much of a and most of the issues with the early, early problems don't exist anymore. That's one thing I think we have to own that. Like, the distinction between Lutheran, the Lutheran tradition, and Roman Catholic tradition of the church is not what it once was, correct?

Roseann Bowlin:

My sister and I had a very interesting conversation Sunday on this subject, because we were raised Catholic, and she's she's very much Catholic, and in her traditions and her sort of ideology and, and I'm Lutheran, yeah,

Pastor Joe Liles:

right. So, yeah, you had a joint conversation. We

Roseann Bowlin:

probably could have written that great, that's all. So

Pastor Joe Liles:

this is also a seminary test. If you've heard about this, J, D, D, j, and you're that intrigued to go into our show notes and discover and read it. You might enjoy seminary, if you are slightly intrigued, but you're not going to go pull that up and read it. You just might love church and then get there. If you're not going to read it, but you enjoy the podcast, then you're just a wonderful member. Welcome to the neighborhood. Welcome to the neighborhood. That's it. I love it. It's a great seminary test note number

Roseann Bowlin:

four, alright. Thanks. So. So this one was from First Timothy, chapter two, verses three through five. This is right, and it is acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ, Jesus himself human. And my note was only Christ, yeah, that's it.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So loose Christus, yes, right? So change a little bit from the sola Solus, Christus, and this is only Christ, right? And and we can only get to, and the Christ says this in Scripture also, but we can only get to the Father. Get to the Father through Christ, right? There is not another mediator on our behalf, which is very important, because that again, goes back into priestly authority and papal authority. They were trying to intercede on the behalf of God, and Luther made the distinction that only God can do these things, and it is not on the Pope or the papal authority. And I do want to say, remember, Luther at this time is a Catholic teacher, doctorate priest, right? So he's in the Catholicism. So this isn't against the Pope, right? It's not against papal authority. It's not against the structure of the church. It's literally aligning back to God versus the Pope and papal authority. It's not removing the order of the church, but challenging that authority of the Church and putting it back in the hands of God. So I don't want to take this moment to be like, ah, Catholics right? It's not really what the intention was. It was meant to be a conversation. It was meant to be a starter for Hey, we need to talk. It just got a little out of hand.

Tom Helmich:

It's a classic oversteer. Let's try to change the direction a little bit.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, flipped it. You gotta feel your likes, yeah, that's crazy. It was a moment. So my

Roseann Bowlin:

last note, yeah, is First Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 31 so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, everything for the glory of God, and I put Amen, put away pride and selfish desires. The pastor is with the people, never above. The Gospel cannot be contained in a building or a denomination. I think that was a direct

Pastor Joe Liles:

I was a preach,

Tom Helmich:

don't drop the mic. That's

Pastor Joe Liles:

really good. That is Soli Deo Gloria, right? And that is only for the glory of God. And I think you're right, right? That was the last point that I preached on Sunday. Is that really the reality is that we do everything for the glory of God, right? When you break down your life and you look at all the things there, and this can be in daily decisions. It can be how you wake up. It can be how you treat your kids, how you respond to adverse situations. It could be in the line in the morning, right? I just a side note, walked into safe flight auto glass this morning, and had been working for a week to get my glass replaced and had all the insurance signed up and all the things done correctly and everything else, and I walked in this morning on a schedule, needing to get to be places on time in order to get to this podcast. And they looked at me and they said, Hey, you you're not verified yet. And out of all the 10 conversations I've been in this past week with safe flight and State Farm and confirmed from both sides that everything was good to go, I walked in this morning and I was like, Oh, I'm about to be hot. Like, Man, I don't have time for this. And then it honestly goes back to in every single decision you give glory back to God there. There are seven, eight people in that waiting room, right, who all have experienced adverse situations and that. And yeah, we have all the opportunity to get unlevel headed, right, and to kind of say, this is not the reality that I want to be living in. I think when we look at everything, goes back to the glory of God. It's in the smallest distinctions in our daily life, and it is with the profound theological implications in our daily life. It extends between them, all right? When we're discussing what is the justification by faith mean to us, and when we're sitting in a waiting room and things have not gone well, right? All those go back to who am? I am as a person that is following Jesus Christ, knowing that I'm justified by my faith, through the grace of God, and not by my works. And then how do we live our life, responding to that and my hope truly from Sunday like hearing these Solas, it was really interesting. It's almost like if we have the understanding that we are to go and make disciples, we have the understanding that our mission is to go make disciples, teaching them. You know, everything that I've commanded you across all the world, right? This great commission that is the mission, that is the vision of every church, every church, every Christian Church, that is it, right? Every church has a different mission statement. It's not true. That's it. That's the one mission statement of the church, right? These would be considered the values, if you were to break down what do you look at as the values of the church that exist after that mission statement to go and make disciples? This is it, if you could teach people what it means to be a part of the church, teach them this, these five solos, right? These are the only values that we should live by when we're looking and then we dig into our life in relation to those values in the Scripture. So, yeah, I loved, I love this message. I love your notes, because that took us through the five solas. I appreciate that. That was amazing. But those are the five onlys, right, that went through. And that was kind of a key part that came out of the Reformation, right? And it was a key part that led into these 95 theses that also existed there. So, so that was great. So that was really a little bit more breakdown of the Reformation, little breakdown of things that are coming up. We got an exciting couple weeks that are happening. Coming up this week is Mother's Day. But not only Mother's Day, it is 90s worship day. Literally. Have people very excited to hear the 90s music. Already had people respond to our post and the Spotify plays I put together that I did not include songs that were in the 90s that they love. And how dare I not put jars of play in there. So which is not wrong, it's not wrong. It's not an exhaustive list, but it's not wrong. So we're gonna have a lot of fun this Sunday. Tom on the 14th, which I think is coming up after Mother's Day. That's next Wednesday. You're at an approval at seminary. That happens, I

Tom Helmich:

won't be there before I've done the interview, and they the faculty meetup to decide, like, do we really want to unleash this on the church? At some point I'll find out where don't know how that'll work. No. Then, of course, we're hosting a traditional Sunday

Pastor Joe Liles:

right here at the neighborhood church to go through. What is the kind of after these moments of hearing about the tradition? How many of us grew up in very traditional church that I'm going to miss this church full of hymnals. It's going to be full of hymnals, 100% full of hymnals, and it's going to be incredible and alcohol. And Albs and stoles and communion from those trays. Are you doing the little tray community? Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if I'm going to call them shot glasses on Sunday, but that's the thing that's talking about the 14th. So that's 18 that we have a congregational meeting to vote and call you as pastor of Karen education and the study things in the church, and then, and then beyond that, we have graduation Sunday, which Tom pull up the graduates. We have like, 14 people.

Tom Helmich:

It's not entirely correct. We've had some issues with so a little thing for the for those out there listening, yeah, we automatically go through once a year and update correct people's ages from one to another. But depending on when we do it and whether or not parents go in there and update their kids their own then it gets updated beyond, yeah, where they're at. So we have some showing as seniors that are juniors. That's why, 100% why I sent you that list. So yeah, I'm working through I'm working through it, yeah, because it's not entirely accurate, yeah, and I'll make sure nobody's missed. But we also have a few that would love to be graduating, but have one more year to go.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Oh, that's great. That's fantastic. Yeah, met some of our seniors on Sunday. So coming over here talking, they're exciting for senior Sunday. So that's happened on the 25th and you're preaching because you also will be a graduation person on senior Sunday, because I will have graduated, you have graduated. That's exactly right. So, so some exciting things coming up in the life of the church, but that is our TNC podcast talking about the Reformation And all God's people said, Amen.

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Pastor Joe Liles

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Pastor Tom Helmich

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Roseann Bowlin

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Tevo Christmann

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