Today’s episode is a little less conventional, but we are discussing the increasingly de-churched Republican primary voter.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve encountered more and more Texans who fit this profile, and I wanted to take the time today to address the concerns this has created.
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News, politics and special guests with a Texas twist. That’s the goal of the lunacy a show, our nation and state are at a crossroads. And if you’re not informed, you’re not equipped to make the change our community needs, join the conversation, and join the cause for liberty.
Welcome to Episode 157 of the loot Misia show. Today’s episode is going to be titled, The de churched Republican primary voters and anything maybe the increasingly de churched Republican primary voters. There’s a difference if you are in the church world. Or if you’re a pastor or a church planter, or you know seminaries or Christendom, we’ll talk about de churched and unchurched people and I want to kind of specify the difference between the two and then I’m going to tell you what prompted today’s episode. unchurched are individuals who have grown up as a secular individual in a secular home and have not encountered church. And that is an increasingly, it’s an increasingly larger portion of the population within the United States.
So there are people, it used to be that most everybody you would run into have probably had a background in church. And that’s not the case anymore. And then deep church would be people who grew up in church, or maybe recently attended a church at some point, but are no longer engaged in church for one reason or another. Often because church is a local body of fallen sinners. And so any problem that you would encounter, whether it be with your family, or your spouse, or your you know, parents or your siblings or your cousins or the local club that you’re a member of that you don’t like or your HOA, these same problems will often manifest themselves in tensions within the local church body, and people will get hurt, or things are taught. And we’re going to get into some of those reasons why somebody would be detached. But I talked to you last week about the hundreds of phone calls that I’ve been receiving. And even some today, I’m recording this the day before Election Day, and still receiving calls today from conservative individuals throughout bear county talking to me about who they’re going to vote for. And in the course of these conversations, I’ve had some great introductory conversations with a lot of people that I didn’t know about who they were going to vote for, but then also just about their lives because I care about these people in general. And there has been an increasing Lee larger theme of people who are very conservative, who want to protect our state who want to stop the Marxist indoctrination of children in our schools who want to stop transitioning children and having the sexual revolution permeate our society who want to protect the unborn, who want strong Christian values that they hold, to be represented in a party that claims to represent them. But who are de churched? I cannot tell you one of the common questions I would ask somebody, if they said, Oh, I read this stuff that you believe, and I believe it too.
We’re Christians. We’re XY and Z. And therefore we love what we’re seeing here. And we are intending to vote kind of on some of the things that you’ve told us to vote on. In the course of those conversations. One of my first questions is, hey, where do you all attend church, and I’m here in San Antonio. I’ve grown up in the city for a portion of my life. I’ve been there since I was 13 years old. I know a lot of the churches. I know a lot of large churches. I know a lot of small churches. I know the Messianic Jewish churches, I know Catholic churches, and a lot of the Protestant churches and I have family throughout the city and friends throughout the city, they go to all sorts of different churches. So there’s a good chance that I might be connected in some form or fashion. And so I’d say where do you all attend church? And I will tell you, there was an increasing number of fact more, I really mean this. More of the people who identified themselves as Christian would then tell me, Well, we’re in between churches right now, or we don’t really attend church, then would say, I attend this church, right? So I would say I attend Wayside Chapel, which is a good church. We actually live down the street from it. My wife and I, quite a few people who attended Community Bible Church, which is one of the largest evangelical churches in San Antonio, I’m not surprising that these strong conservative Christians attend CBC who for a long time has taught pretty Orthodox Christian beliefs. My wife and I aren’t really attracted to the large church setting. That’s not where we have ended up in and I’ve talked to people in this program that I’ve shared before, but we’re are members of a Lutheran church here in San Antonio and have a more church bent towards church history and through a traditional service and the power of a more ordered lit Energy and an understanding and appreciation of the church calendar.
But instead of me pitching you on that, I want to really just get to the heart of this concern I had in the fact that so many of these people, that would seem like kindred spirits with myself in the conversation, we’d have a vast majority of them when I said, where do you attend church would respond? Were kind of look in. And then I would say, Okay, well, how long have you been looking? And then they Oh, yours? Oh, okay. Well, that’s a little bit of a concern. A lot of them said, Well, we used to attend this church, but our pastor got really woke, and started preaching different liberal political philosophies from the pulpit. And that is a super sad thing to hear, I will tell you that I’ve talked about this a little bit. But I’ve also worked with a lot of different individuals within the evangelical world who have worked to kind of call out the weakness that often permeates the pulpit, and I am an opponent of these liberal ideas, that some times are allowed to permeate and infiltrate the church, because I don’t think they’re reflective of traditional Christian Orthodox teachings in the understanding of the inerrant Word of God. And what it says not only about who God is, and who his son is, and the salvation of the world, but also how we are then to live and conduct ourselves and the values that our Creator has, and how we live those out. These are all conversations to have. So quite a few of these believers would say, Oh, well, we we don’t really attended church, we left this church because of a bad experience for this reason, or this reason, some would say, Well, look, and they would go through their kind of laundry list. And I kind of think of this as like, the some older singles, I know that I’ll ask about what are you looking for in a wife or a husband? And they’ll list like 17 things, right? And they don’t have like two or three things like, well, I want this and this and this and this and this, and I’m like, Okay, now I understand, you know, the position you’re in, and there’s kind of that section of Christian who will say, well, I need I really need hymns. And I really need line by line exegetical priests preaching, like, I just, I don’t want you to do different topics. And I really need this when it comes to house present, I really need a service that’s structured in this way. And I really don’t like my children getting separated in this way, or I don’t like youth groups, or I need a big youth group, or whatever it is, it’s this long list. And, and that’s kind of that we kind of have talked about this before.
But there, there has been this kind of consumerist mentality where Christians are often looking at exactly what they can get out of a particular. So they’re kind of looking at this as a performance and some of that the church has perpetuated This is not a blame game on just one or two individuals. I mean, the church, when it creates this kind of performative experience for people, then breeds within these people, this idea that I’m just coming to consume a certain particular performance, so you’ve made yourself a product. And then there’s this other issue that comes out that maybe it gets a little bit more of the heart of my concern, which is that there was this idea, that is true, that is, you are the church, if you are a Christian, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that through him, we can have unity with the Father. If you believe that He is the Savior of the world, that he was the propitiation for our sins, that he was the atoning sacrifice made so that we can have unity with the Father. Then you are the church. Now, this is a true statement, by the way. But this is a true statement that can be wrongly applied, because I had a lot of people telling me Well, I don’t attend church, because I mean, we are the church. It’s not a building. And there is truth within that statement, which is that we are the church, the people of God are the church. But the universal church the reality that is the I would say this, the Universal Church is a reality that cannot be denied. But if the reality of the local church is also not accepted, the universal church will be misapplied.
so hear me out in that. There’s this other overarching position, which has started to really come into I would say a lot of evangelicalism over time, which all of a sudden starts getting applied by people saying, I am the church therefore I can just have like church in my living room, by myself with my family because we are the church and And that is missing a huge portion of the entire New Testament that’s given to us. Now, before I get back into this, I want to explain why I’m a little concerned about this. I’ve teamed up with Texas scorecard last election cycle, if you remember in November of 2020, I talked about this on a podcast episode. And you can go to Texas scorecard and read it. It says poll, churchgoing Biden voters question the Bible at alarming rates. Okay. And this was a poll done about weekly church attenders. Okay, and this gets I’m not going to get too far into this. But there’s a lot of work that we’ve done when it comes to trying to look at what are the belief systems of people who are attending church on a weekly basis. And, and there’s also a huge situation where a lot of evangelicals who would hold views that are not in line with scripture, more of them are just not attending church, but they will identify as an evangelical Yeah, I’m a Christian. And then they hold all these views, both politically and theologically, that are not in line with what the scripture has taught. But then you realize, okay, well, they’re not even in church. And it is true that when you get to weekly church attenders, you get a much more, I would say, correct interpretation, both of Scripture and Scripture applied, which doesn’t surprise anyone. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not people who attend church that also maybe miss apply scripture to certain political, socio economic ideas that happens, we’ve all seen that happen. Some of you have been at churches that had pastors that were preaching those things. My concern is this, when I talk to someone who is passionate about the same things I’m passionate about in politics, but is missing out on a huge gift that clearly instructed to believers in Scripture, I just have concern over our prop, our Miss appropriated priorities are disordered priorities and what we think matters when it comes to preserving the society around us in protecting the values we hold, and advocating for truth, all of these things are things that I think we tried to do on the Luke Misia show, and I think Texas scorecard tries to do and its publications and all of you tried to do a lot in your activism and activity and the people you sit down with him.
But it is really concerning that I just had a whole lot of conversation with a whole lot of people who said, I’m a Christian, conservative Republican, just like you, where do you attend church? I don’t really do it. I’m out. A pretty significant portion of people would say things like I was at a church that was liberal. And the reality is that, you know, a mainline liberal church is not an excuse for a believer to disconnect and disassociate with the local church that was created by God in His order, for your flourishing and for your understanding. You know, Paul only ever talked to church churches. I mean, he wrote, we have all these letters in the New Testament, the church at Corinth, the church in Colossae, the church in Philippi, you know, we don’t have like the church of Thomas in Thomas’s living room. And there’s really only one time that we really even see the specific instruction. I guess, in Hebrews, we see this kind of portion of this letter, Hebrews 1025, where Paul actually says, Do not abandon the assembly. Right. So evidently, in Hebrews, we have this understanding that some people were abandoning gathering together, right. And in Hebrews 1025, we see right there says, Do not abandon our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encourage one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near all the more as you see the day drawing near. Do you know what’s more true today, the day is drawing nearer than it was at the time, and at this time, as some translations will say, Do not forsake the assembly is kind of one of the accurate translations of Paul’s petition or his request of the church. But evidently, there were some people who were forsaking the assembly. And he’s saying, do not do this.
We tend to read Scripture often in somewhat of an American lens. So we have this individualistic view. That’s Americans, we’re independent spirits, okay. And if you take Texans were more independent spirited than the rest of America, which makes us like better Americans than most Americans. And that’s just what we have to deal with guys. It’s tough to be a Texan. We’re even better than the rest of the country. And that also sometimes can breed arrogance, which, you know, I admit we have to work on and, look, the reason we have to be humble is because we’re so good. But I digress. Here’s the Reality, we tend to have this individualistic idea or mentality that can sometimes take over. And then when we read scripture, if you’re a Christian, you will then interpret it as individualistic, right? So Colossians three, my, my pastor and I were actually reading through this particular passage of scripture, and I’m going to make sure to pull up the right. Translation, hold on a second, bear with me for one second, gentlemen. But it says, Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ keeping, keep seeking the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, Set your minds on things that are above, not on the things that are of Earth. And if you go to Colossians, three, because I’m not going to read the entire passage of Scripture, but you kind of it sets this thing up for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God, when Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Wow. Great message there in Colossians. Here’s the thing though. The proper interpretation of this scripture is actually y’all. Okay, this is a Texas term that we understand. And the reality is that most Christians, when they read portions of Scripture like this, they just go like me, me, me. It’s very you, right?
And this is actually y’all, which is a term that Texans understand. But these are often instructions given to a corporate body to gether, right? And Colossians three is a great one to read through to understand the instructions of how we are to practice our faith. Even gets to the point that it says. It says, Let, in addition to all these things, put on love you all together, put all of which is the perfect bond of unity unifies us locally, says, Let the peace of Christ to which you were indeed called in one body, rule in your hearts and be thankful. So you might read that and go, Okay, one body, one universal church, see, Luke, it’s one universal church. We’re all one body. You mean the the Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Lutheran, the nondenominational CBC, so I am, I am dwelling in one body just like you, Luke, when you’re at your church, and I’m in my home, and this person is at this mega church, this, we are all one body. But then what is the next verse say?
So that’s Colossians 315. Let the peace of Christ to which you were indeed called in one body rule in your hearts and be thankful, not just me, rule into my heart. Then it says, Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in yalls, hearts to God, whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks through him to God, the Father, it then draws us back into this setting where we’re admonishing one another, we’re singing together, we’re, we’re reading scripture and studying together, we have James that instructs us to say, hey, if you’re sick, you talk about COVID. In this time, that you’re supposed to bring the elders of the church together to pray over those who are in sick, this would require you to be members of a body, we talked about the fact that we have people that have needs and did you know that there are people with needs in my church, there are people in needs with churches I’ve attended in the past, where those of us in the church who would see different needs, were able to have opportunities to say, how do we meet that person’s need, and you will complain about government taking over society and then taking all these jobs from the church. But if you’re alone in your home, the truth is, you’re not part of a church to even know what needs the body has to be able to go in and minister one to another. It does require a sense of humility, to placing yourself under something that’s vulnerable. A lot of people have been hurt within that situation. It’s very, it’s a sad reality that we deal with. But that’s anything we deal with on this side of eternity. It’s not an excuse, however, for not being able to do these things. When it comes to saying I want to meet one another’s needs. I want to bear one another’s burdens.
These are things that are specifically lived out in the local church. And again, I’m not even at this point in time pushing you to one particular denomination. If you want to talk about that, I’d be double talking about anytime. I have opinions, I have thoughts, but I am concerned that I do not believe that the best prescription for Bible believing Christians in Texas is to disconnect From the local church that has been established by God, for His people, for His glory. And it does concern me. We shouldn’t forsake the assembly. That’s what we’re told in Scripture. And we wouldn’t be told that if we didn’t have a potential to potentially desired to forsake the assembly.
But these things are important. This is on election day, you’re hearing this while people are voting, and we’re going to come to you probably midweek, if not next week, with a diagnosis, some things that we take away from this election. And so we’re going to learn a lot we’re going to observe, we’re going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes out of the election season, which all three of those things come out of every single election season. There’s a lot of good that will come out of this election season, there are some things that will come out of this election season that are not good. But as I was experiencing these hundreds of phone calls with people, this was just something that kind of concerned me that I felt like on election day, since I didn’t really know what to talk to y’all about was worth having a conversation about. My encouragement is that if you’re not plugged in, in fact, I had the same encouragement in my Christmas card, my wife and I send out a Christmas letter to our close friends and family. Every year, it’s something my mom did, which I think is a tradition to uphold. But in that I talked about the all of the life giving ways God was using our local church of people building into us, and then us pouring into them. And ultimately, all of that is just God pouring into his people. But one of the things that I even encourage people there was, if you are not plugged in and connected to a local body, please do so. And this is not so that you can go sit and every Sunday be told by your pastor, to go vote, we have a lot.
You’re all gonna vote, I was talking to all these people. Like there’s plenty of political activity. I’m here, I’m saying these things. But the reality is that I’m talking about the things that literally not only matter, but we are told in Scripture, we have an opportunity to live out in practice within a local church body. And there’s a lot more I could say. And there’s a lot of verses I could read. And I have done this in a short enough period of time where there are probably maybe things that I have said that could offend you. Or you could take away and say well, I don’t know that you’re fully understand that. So please feel free to reach out to her show, reach out to me through the website, we can have more conversations about it and continue this conversation together. But I hope that you all are encouraged if you’re not plugged in to consider and if you are plugged in, maybe you are attending a church, but maybe this is an encouragement for you to really take a step back and go, How am I plugged in? How am I serving? How am I pouring out? How am I establishing community? How am I investing? How am I meeting the needs?
Have any of you gone to your pastor in the last couple months and said, Hey, who is someone in our church that has financial needs? I want to know because you probably don’t know, I’m just going to tell you most of you probably don’t know, but your pastor probably does. If he’s doing his job, he probably does. He probably knows well, this person just lost their job. They’re having a really hard time this person is really sick and their insurance isn’t covering the needs. And they’re trying to do some stuff in our churches help them a little bit. Oh wow. Why didn’t know that maybe I can go meet with people in our church and say, Hey, there’s this need that we need to meet? And let’s raise some money and help the first I don’t know what kind of community you’re plugged into. But how are you engaging? How are you serving? How are you helping? And are you being fed because I don’t know about you? I need to be fed. Luke the church of Luke is not a church you want to be a member of you don’t want to be a member of church a Luke and Luke slipping room. Luke needs to go submit I’m talking about myself in the third person that’s kind of weird. I need to go put myself in a church and I need to be fed with spiritual food. These are the gifts that were given. And God has ways of giving those that we’re all not taking advantage of. That’s all I got for today. God bless you. And God bless Texas. Thank you for listening to the lunacy your show. This program is brought to you by scorecard media. check out Texas scorecard.com. To read up on all things Texas scorecard media has other podcasts as well. Yeah, they’re not as good as this one, but you should still check them out. Honestly, though, visit Texas scorecard.com To see all the content they’re producing on a daily basis. If you’d like our podcast to grow, please consider subscribing to the show on whatever platform you’re listening and leave a review that helps others find the content we’re producing. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless Texas.
