Ep. 195: Church IRL

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Hey, everyone. This is Kourtney. Our guest on this week’s episode of indoubt is Jeremy Cagle. Jeremy is the Teaching Pastor at Grace Fellowship Church, and Joshua talks to him about the importance of actually going to church each week. With technology at our hands like never before, we have the opportunity to watch a sermon online or listen to a podcast as we drive. Those aren’t bad things, but when we use them to take the place of church, we’re excluding ourselves from the corporate aspect of church. It’s easy to sit at home on a Sunday morning and think that we’re not missing much, but Jeremy and Joshua encourage each of us to pursue church and everything that we’d be missing by staying home. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you enjoy this episode with Joshua and Jeremy Cagle.

Joshua Scott:
So Sunday after Sunday, we wake up, maybe at a reasonable hour, you have 10:00 AM service. Maybe an unreasonable hour, God bless those 8:00 AM services. You show up at church, shake a few hands, you grab your coffee, take your seat. You maybe stand, sing a few songs, sit down, take an offering, stand again, sing a few songs. But inevitably, a pastor is going to rise to the pulpit and preach from the Word of God. Why has this become the norm of Christian worship services? This is a question that, oddly enough, not a lot of people think about. Why do we hear the Word preached every Sunday?
Well, I think there’s some really good answers to that question. And I think that’s a question that, as young adults, we really need to wrestle through. Why is it that I come to the church on Sunday to hear the Word? Why don’t I just listen to a podcast? Why don’t I listen to a good song? So, I’m excited to wrestle through these questions today, and I’m really excited to be joined by Pastor Jeremy Cagle, who’s the Teaching Pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Chilliwack. So, thanks so much for joining us, Jeremy.

Jeremy Cagle:
Yeah, thank you Joshua. It’s an honour to be here and a privilege. Thank you.

Joshua Scott:
Yeah, great. So, you’re a pastor. How long have you been in the ministry?

Jeremy Cagle:
Well, in full-time ministry, probably around 10 years, around that time. But during my college years, when I was a young adult, I started preaching actually in a nursing home. I was 19 years old, and my tennis coach, I played tennis in college, told me that he knew I was interested in ministry, and he said there was a nursing home nearby that the people there could not go out and to attend a Sunday morning service. And so, they were looking for a preacher and they got me. I started preaching Sunday by Sunday and that’s kind of how it got started.

Joshua Scott:
Wow. So, you’ve got a bit of experience in this area.

Jeremy Cagle:
A little bit.

Joshua Scott:
Great. So, as a pastor, as a teaching pastor at Grace Fellowship Church, you preach every Sunday. So, can I start with this question? Why? Why do you prepare a sermon through the week and then preach faithfully every Sunday?

Jeremy Cagle:
Yeah, that’s a great question. The easiest answer, the simplest answer is that the Bible tells us to do that. 2 Timothy, chapter four, Paul tells Timothy, who was a pastor, he says, “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead.” And by His appearing in His kingdom, that’s quite an introduction to a charge. He says, “Preach the Word.”
So, basically, the Bible tells us to do that as ministers. Our Lord Jesus Christ was a preacher. That’s what He did. He was a carpenter, and then He became a preacher. John the Baptist was a preacher, the apostles were preachers, the prophets in the Old Testament, that’s what they did as well. And so the Reformers were preachers, the Puritans were preachers, the men during the first and second Great Awakening in church history were also preachers.
And so, I just mention that background to say that you stand in a long line of men when you stand in the pulpit and preach the Word of God. You have the commands in scripture. 2 Timothy 4 would be one, 2 Timothy 2:15 says, “Be diligent to present yourself, approve to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”
And so, there’s church history, there’s the scriptures. All those are reasons why I feel like there’s a calling to do this week by week. And it’s a privilege. Absolutely.

Joshua Scott:
Cool. So, I remember in elementary school, I would go to an assembly and somebody would share this motivational speech. Is that preaching? Or what makes preaching, preaching?

Jeremy Cagle:
Even stepping back for a minute, maybe the question that you’re asking, which is a good one, is the difference between a secular pep talk and the difference between a sermon. And I think probably baseline answer would be the content. Secular motivation… I followed sports a lot growing up. In sports, you’re always looking for motivation to get the guys psyched up, get them pumped up for a game. And you could draw off of anything for that. Anything emotional, anything that would be sentimental, you could use.
But a preacher’s job is not to do that. That doesn’t mean there’s not times when you motivate people, you absolutely do. But a preacher’s job is to stand on the authority of the Word of God. You just saw that in the passage there in 2 Timothy where he tells him to preach the Word. The idea there is, “Timothy, your job is not to make up whatever you want, and your job is not to communicate your ideas or even your background or your history. It’s not about you Timothy, it’s about the Word of God that’s been given to you in the Bible.”
And so, maybe an example of this would be… I’m not originally from Chilliwack or from British Columbia. I’m from Tennessee, which is a long way away from here. And when I stand up in the pulpit every week for our people, I don’t feel like there’s a void that keeps me from communicating to them, because I’m not communicating to them my background, I’m not here to talk about me or my life. My job is to teach them what’s in the scriptures.
There was a book written years ago by John Stott called, Between Two Worlds. And in the book, he talked about how it’s a preacher’s job to stand between the world of the Bible and the world of the people that he’s preaching to. And his job is to dive into the first century world or the world of the Old Testament and unravel that, un-package that, for the people that are listening. And so, that’s what I feel like my job is, I stand between two worlds. I stand between the world of the Bible and the world of our people, and I try to make the two come alive.

Joshua Scott:
That’s great. I’m glad you make that note about being from Tennessee and coming up here and not feeling like there’s a barrier. I was just thinking on and studying 2 Corinthians 4 the other day, where he says, “We do not proclaim ourselves, but we proclaim Christ Jesus.” And what an encouragement that is. For those who go out, even some people as missionaries, feel like that’s a bit of a hold for them to stop, well, I don’t know anything about, and there is the wisdom of learning a culture and going into that with an understanding, but ultimately recognizing we preach Christ.

Jeremy Cagle:
That’s right. And in our church on a Sunday morning, and I’m pretty sure it’d probably be like anyone’s church in this area. I’m looking at seven or eight countries represented. And the funny thing about the whole cultural dynamic is which culture are you going to talk about? We have so many that are there. And we have so many different translations of the Bible that they’ll bring in. We have people that are bringing their German Bible with their English Bible. They’ll bring in their Afrikaans Bible. And, at the end of the day, all the cultural things, it’s not that they’re not important, but the most important thing is to preach the Word.

Joshua Scott:
What would you say is the difference between preaching and teaching the Word?

Jeremy Cagle:
Yeah, well, there can be a lot of overlap, let me just say that. In Ephesians 4, Paul says that the Lord gave some to be apostles, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers. And that word, pastors and teachers, a lot of commentary say they’re the same word or the same office. The word and, if I understand that correctly, it may not be in the original. So, all that to say, there can be a lot of overlap between the two offices.
But if we were going to make a simple distinction between the two, it’s like the idea of a teacher presents the truth to people and then a pastor applies it. Or if I could say that again in a very simple way, a pastor is a shepherd, he takes the sheep from one place to another. A teacher could be more like a guide who tells him where to go but may not necessarily hold their hand on the way there. For me personally, I see them to be very similar. I don’t know how you can really pastor people if you’re not teaching them. But having said that, you can be a teacher in a college classroom or something like that and not be a pastor per se.

Joshua Scott:
So for those who just come on a Sunday and were listening to a sermon, why is preaching so important to take in? Because I could be home laying in bed and I pop in my headphones and I’m listening to a podcast, or I go on a drive. I do that often. I jump in my car and I turn a podcast, I drive, and I just listen to it. Why is it that that’s not the same as coming and hearing a pastor preaching in person? Is that a good replacement? What would you say to that?

Jeremy Cagle:
Well, first off, maybe to say it’s such a unique thing in our day in age to be able to do that. Christians, for centuries, couldn’t do that. When the Lord Jesus would say, “Follow Me,” it was an interesting thing to say because if you wanted to hear Him preach, you had to literally follow Him.

Joshua Scott:
Right.

Jeremy Cagle:
There was no radio, there was no programs like what we’re doing here. You had to literally audibly go where He went. And so, I remember even reading about Martin Lloyd Jones, he was a British pastor who died in the 1980s, but his ministry was in the ’40s and ’50s when radio came out, radio cassette tapes and that kind of thing. And he would wrestle with, “What do we do with these cassette tapes?” So, I would say it’s a pretty new phenomenon. But podcasts, things online, are all great. Well, if it’s good material, it’s great. So, definitely all for that.
But there is a difference between hearing preaching live versus hearing it through the computer. The scripture tells us, 1 Peter 2:2, “Like newborn babes long for the pure milk of the Word.” So, we are to long for that. Hebrews 10 tells us to not neglect meeting together. And within that meeting there’s the dynamic of preaching. So, there’s a couple of reasons why I think it’s important probably to hear preaching live. One is you can turn it off if it’s online, and you can’t turn it off if you’re in the room. And so, there’s messages that you probably need to hear but that may not be something you just really want to hear. And there’s also an element of Matthew 28, Jesus tells the disciples, “Make disciples, teaching them all the things I’ve taught you.” And a lot of times when you listen to stuff online, it’s the hunt and pick method. You pick things that you only want to hear. When you’re forced to listen to the next passage or that kind of thing, it gives you a full scope of the Word of God.
So those are some reasons. Another one is, when you’re in the room listening to preaching, there’s a sense of immediacy there. There should be. There’s a sense of this is something that I need to deal with right now. But when it’s online, you can’t do that. Another reason is you are being built up into the body of Christ together. And you need to listen to preaching together. You need to be with other people hearing the Word of God. If you’re doing that by yourself, well, God’s goal in your life is not just to make you a Christian all by yourself, that is not a biblical idea. That’s something I really fear for my generation, your generation, and as younger Christians come up, I think a lot of us aren’t quite getting that. I think we’re becoming very isolated in our Christian walk. And that’s not what the Lord wants for us. He wants us to be in a church together.

Joshua Scott:
For those who are looking for a church and trying to find the right church to be a part of, what is it that, on a Sunday if they’re visiting, that we ought to look for in a good sermon? I don’t even know, is that the right way to talk about it? Is there a good sermon, a bad sermon? And what would you say if someone’s arriving to church on a Sunday, what should they be expecting to hear from the pulpit and what defines a sermon that we want to be listening to?

Jeremy Cagle:
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I think clarity would be very important. Yeah, there’s a lot of churches, right? Especially in our town, in Chilliwack, I think someone told me there’s 60 churches, or there abouts. And so, if you are looking for a church, you’re going to see a lot of things. You’re going to see a lot of options, a lot of opportunities. And a lot of them are teaching the Word, and some are not. But the one thing you’re looking for is clarity. Do I understand what he’s saying? Is this helping me understand the Bible better?
If a minister’s job is to preach the Word, am I walking away understanding the Word of God better as a result of this sermon? And that’s something when you go into a church, maybe I could also say, you want to be very humble about that. The Word of God is just that, over us, us as pastors, us as people in the church, whoever it is, we’re not to sit over it. And so, you don’t want to come into a church and say, “Well, that wasn’t good enough,” or, “That was good enough.” You’re not the judge, jury, and executioner. That’s not the approach. You want to be humble about that. But at the end of the day, you do need to understand the Bible from what you’re learning. And so, that’s something I think in a sermon, that’s key.

Joshua Scott:
That’s good. So, here’s a question. If I’m waking up on a Sunday morning, I’ve had a bit of a rough week, but I go to church anyway. I know that I should, I don’t want to neglect meeting together, Hebrews 10. But I come and I don’t particularly want to listen to a sermon. I want to just turn my brain off and I just want to sit there and maybe take a little mini nap or open up Snapchat for a little bit while I’m sitting in the seats. What would you suggest that I do when I come to a service with that feeling, when I’m heavy, when I’m bored or tired? What’s something you would suggest to someone who feels that way coming into a church service?

Jeremy Cagle:
Well, I would say you’re a human being, so you’re going to feel that way. So, I would say don’t be too frustrated about that.

Joshua Scott:
That’s good.

Jeremy Cagle:
I think that’s a normal thing. When I moved to Canada, we had just adopted my youngest son, and he was three months old when I moved here. And we were doing all the immigration stuff and all the stuff of a new church, and all this with a three-year-old and a three-month-old. And all that to say we would come to church sometimes and we hadn’t had much sleep. His bed was right above where my desk is. My desk is downstairs for the church, and then his bedroom was upstairs. I’ll just say I feel your pain. There’s times when you’re going to come in and you’re going to be just out of it for whatever reason, but I think that’s when you go back to just do your duties as a believer.
You need the Word of God, you need this. You need to be reading it. You need to be in prayer over the things you learn in scripture, but you also need to be sitting under the preaching of the Word as well. And so, you do it as a duty as a believer, and you let the feelings catch up. You obviously want to feel the right things for God. You should want that. But when that’s not there, you follow the Word, give it all you’ve got, and pray for Him to turn your heart around.

Joshua Scott:
That’s good. Where do I put preaching in that priority level? If I can make a Bible study on Wednesday nights and I have to work Sundays, but that’s good. Is that good enough? And is that good enough for a long period of time? Or should I be pursuing the opportunity to be hearing the Word preached on a Sunday or Saturday night? Where should I hold that priority? Is a Bible study enough?

Jeremy Cagle:
I would say that it’s really not, at the end of the day. I say that gently just because I understand people’s scenarios. So, I understand there’s times when someone has to work on Sunday. But there’s a lot of other things that go on on a Sunday morning that you don’t want to miss. Like, for instance, baptism happens on a Sunday morning, the Lord’s supper happens on Sunday morning, the corporate worship, whether that be singing or prayer or those types of things happen on a Sunday morning.
At our church just last Sunday we had some testimonies from people. And you just miss all of those wonderful things that happen on a Sunday if you only go during the week. And so, preaching is part of what the Lord has called the church to do. But there’s all these other things as well, and you don’t want to miss out on those. They’re very much a blessing for your Christian life.

Joshua Scott:
That’s good. So, after a Sunday sermon, I’ve heard the Word preached, and maybe it’s a really convicting message, maybe not so much. It was just another sermon, another week. What should I do after a sermon? Because I’ve got a whole week until I hear another one, unless I listen to a podcast. How do I respond to a sermon?

Jeremy Cagle:
Well, I think a teachable heart is a big thing. You want to have a soft heart to the Word of God. If you’ve listened to a passage that week on, well, let’s just say humility or something like that. Well, you want to go back and examine your heart and ask the Lord to make you humble that week. That would be a very simple way to do it. You do that in prayer. You’re praying the Lord would flesh that out in your life. And you could do that in accountability as well. You can meet with a brother or sister for accountability in that area and talk to them about your struggles.
At the end of the day, you want to apply what you’ve heard. Remember we talked about the difference between preaching and teaching. And one difference is a preacher is applying the Word of God to someone’s life. So we’re not just giving speeches, we actually want you to go home and do what the Word said for you to do.
And one thing we often, and we just finished a series on Jonah, and one wonderful lesson in the life of Jonah is that, Jonah 2:9, salvation is from the Lord. The Lord is sending Jonah to the evil Ninevites, like the scum of the earth at the time. And he’s sending him there to preach essentially a revival in the town and showing him that the Lord can save whoever He wants. And at the end of the day, the lesson for Jonah was just humility. You got to humble yourself about this, and just receive the fact that this is who the Lord wants to draw to salvation.
But the applications of that is do I see myself as Jonah? Do I think I’m better than the people around? Do I look at everybody else like they’re Ninevites? And so, the lesson is humility. So you come home and you examine your heart in those areas and pray for the Lord to give you grace.

Joshua Scott:
On the same note, if I listened to a sermon, and sometimes I talk to a lot of people who wrestle with this, you’d come away from a Sunday, and a few days later I might ask them, “Hey, what’d you learn on Sunday?” And they say, “I think we were in Titus.” They don’t quite remember.

Jeremy Cagle:
Right. Yeah.

Joshua Scott:
How would you advise somebody? Because there’s not a lot of people who come away from a Sunday sermon thinking, “I want to forget all that.” At least I hope not. But a lot of people want to remember it. What would you suggest and advise for somebody to come away from a sermon and actually be able to remember James saying, “Don’t just look upon the Word and turn away from, as if you’re looking in a mirror and turn away, forget what you even look like, but be doers of the Word.” How is it that you would suggest we go about remembering what we’ve learned?

Jeremy Cagle:
Well, there’s different simple things for that, Joshua. Taking notes, obviously. That helps. To write down what’s being taught. I often give an outline to our people of the passage so that they can see where the thoughts connect. And they… I often encourage them to write those outlines down so they can remember it that way.
But, yeah, so things like that are helpful. Another way is to remember that, again, the Word of God is supposed to be changing you. So, not only should the pastor be coming into this whole preaching experience with gravity and sobriety, seriousness, but the people should as well. Our folks would often say to me that, “Hey, I felt like you were just preaching to me.” Well I was, you were in the room.

Joshua Scott:
Right, right.

Jeremy Cagle:
You know? I’ve been preaching to my heart the whole week and now I’m coming in and doing the same for you. And so, that’s how you have to approach this. Ephesians 4 mentions that the Lord gave these prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers for the equipping of saints, but it mentions until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man. And then it goes on in verse 14 to say what maturity looks like in a Christian life. And it says, “As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by everyone of doctrine.” And the idea of children is the idea of you just don’t have a long attention span, and you just go all over the place.
My kids, the conversations comes in two second sound bites, and then they change their minds on something else. And Paul is saying your maturity in Christ and your growth in Christ and the reason these people are teaching you is to get you off of that track, and to get you to where you’re able to focus on spiritual things, to where you’re not swept away by every trend that sweeps through the church, whatever it may be. And so, some of that is keeping that in mind as you approach Sunday morning service, is that we all have a responsibility in this. That the ministers have responsibility to bring the Word of God to the people. But the people have a responsibility to hear it as well.

Joshua Scott:
That’s good. I wonder if I could ask a question that I hope would be helpful to some of us as we’re wrestling maybe attending our church or trying new churches. What is it that, if I’m listening to a Sunday sermon, is there anything that should to me be a red flag of something indicating that maybe there’s a caution to what I’m listening to here? Because I think we’re seeing quite a few churches opening up that actually aren’t preaching the word anymore, and they’re choosing and preaching other things. And the humility of recognizing what you said earlier, that we come to sit under the Word and not be over it. What are some things that might be red flags to me, if I’m sitting under a sermon that I hear that should kind of warn me about what I’m listening to?

Jeremy Cagle:
Yeah. And that reminds me of that passage in 2 Timothy 4, where Paul says, “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God to preach the Word.” And he says, “Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they’ll accumulate for themselves, teachers in accordance to their own desires.” And that just kind of goes along with what you’re saying, Joshua. Paul is telling Timothy, “Preach the Word, but a time is coming when all kinds of people are not going to be doing that in the church.”
And so, yeah, as far as from the angle of the believer coming to a church service, you’ve got to have discernment. And the idea of discernment is the idea there’s got to be a guard on your mind. You can’t accept everything that’s always taught, taught or put out in a book or put on the radio or on the internet. You’ve got to have a filter. And the filter is the Word of God. And so, if you approach a sermon and the minister flatly says something that’s just un-biblical, it does not match what you can clearly just read in the text, then that would be a red flag.
Another one would be, Paul says it right here, “The job of the preacher is to be ready in season and out of season to reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction.” If the minister is not doing that, if he’s not preaching the Word and reproving sin, rebuking sin, exhorting you to grow in godliness and being patient and with instruction, then those are the things as well.
Some sermons, you listen to them and maybe you get a warm fuzzy feeling from them, but there’s no instruction. You walk away and you say, “I don’t know what…” Going back to the issue of content. “I don’t know what he just said.” Well, give the guy a break. Maybe he had a bad Sunday. But if it’s that way every Sunday, then you probably want to find a new church. You’re supposed to have instruction from the pulpit. You’re supposed to be walking away with biblical content that you can apply during the week.

Joshua Scott:
That’s helpful. That’s helpful. So, last question here. So, you said earlier that, as you’re preparing a sermon, it’s as if you’re preaching it to your own heart during the week. As you’re doing that preparation, what do you find, A, that God does in you? And B, what’s your prayer for your church as you’re preparing that sermon, that you would pray that God would work in them every time you stand to preach?

Jeremy Cagle:
Well, He sanctifies me through the process, that’s for sure. It’s a humbling thing because no matter what I’m wrestling with personally, the Word of God is the Word of God. So, if I feel like I’m not quite getting a passage or applying something super well, it doesn’t matter, that’s what it says and that’s what’s going to be preached on Sunday. And so, I have to repent in my heart. I’ve got to wrestle with that personally. I can’t change it. That’s one reason we preach verse by verse at Grace Fellowship, is just Jesus says in Matthew 28, “Teach them all I’ve commanded you.” Well, the word all means everything.
And so, regardless of whether the pastor feels or doesn’t feel like doing it, so it sanctifies me for sure. We talked about counselling this past week, and just how the Lord fills us up with what we need to counsel one another and there’s times I feel empty. There’s times I don’t feel, going back to the idea of the feeling we talked about earlier, maybe not feel like I really can deal with this person’s problem. I don’t know what to say, but the scriptures say He fills me up with what I need, Romans 15:14 says that.
So, that’s one thing it does for me. My prayer for the people is it would do the same thing. I pray it would sanctify their hearts and lives and grow them in godliness. We are all in this together. We believe in the priesthood of believers. We can all come to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. We all go to God the same way. Some just have different gifts and roles in the church, but we all have the same journey as Christians. And that is to draw closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re trying to follow Him, be more like Him. And so, that’s what I want for our people. That’s my prayer for them every Sunday.

Joshua Scott:
That’s great. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today. I’ve really appreciated this conversation, and I think it’s going to be really helpful to a lot of our listeners.

Jeremy Cagle:
Yeah, thank you, Joshua. It was an honor to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks for joining us for this episode. I’m really glad that we were able to talk to Jeremy Cagle, and I hope that you were encouraged in the part that you play in the local church. If you’d like to follow along with the church that Jeremy is a part of, you can follow them on Instagram at grace.fellowship.chilliwack.
Also, if there’s anything that you’d like to suggest to us or share with us, I’d encourage you to send us a message on social media, or email us at info@indoubt.ca. If you’d like to keep up with us for daily content, you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
The only thing I want to add on this episode is just a quick mention of the indoubt app that you can download on Apple or Android smartphones. You have access to everything that’s on the website, every podcast episode, all the articles, the Jude Bible study, and more. It’s just easier to access right on your phone. You’ll also get a notification every time there’s a new episode, so you never miss a conversation.
Thanks again for listening this week and I hope you join us for our next episode where Daniel will be talking with Ruth Simons, who’s an artist, author, and speaker, about her new book, Beholding and Becoming: The Art of Everyday Worship.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.