In this episode pastors Derek Brown and Cliff McManis reflect on what they’ve learned during the pandemic, particularly on the issue of how the church relates to government.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to a special edition of the With All Wisdom podcast where we are applying biblical truth to your everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I’m here with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders here at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California. Today we are going to talk about a very important topic. We’re going to talk about how the church relates to the government. But before we get to that topic, I want to point your attention to WithAllWisdom.org where we have a large and growing collection of resources to help you in your walk with Christ and in your spiritual growth. Now to our topic. A year and four months later from the onset of COVID and the lockdowns and the government response to COVID, I want to ask you, Cliff, as a pastor, what have you learned about the relationship between the church and government?
Cliff: Yes, very important question and thanks, Derek. And as they say, hindsight is 20-20. And here, I still can’t believe it. It is now, as you said, 16 months later when COVID rolled in here in California, but also across the world. And at the time, back in March 2020, people were saying, oh, this is just going to pass through. It’ll be done in two months. And it’s hard to believe that 16 months later, we are still confronted with COVID masks distancing and we’re still having discussions, debates over the government and local ordinances. How does the church relate to government locally, in the state, federally? It’s an ongoing debate. And so, I just want to talk about today with you as a pastor and shepherd, what are some of the lessons that we have learned? We’ve learned a lot of lessons, but what are some of the main ones that we want to focus on that are still relevant in light of this challenge that we’ve had the last year and four months? And one thing I want to just use as a springboard, as you know, five years ago in 2016, we released a book. I wrote a book called What the Bible Says About Government. And you know that book very well, Derek, because you edited the book. And when I wrote it, What the Bible Says About Government, I thought I had said everything I needed to say about government and how the church should relate to government. And now that I look back 16 months into this pandemic and five years after I’ve written the book, I looked through the book that I wrote five years ago and realized there are some glaring omissions, things that I did not address at all that apply to our current situation. And you and I, as we are shepherds at the local church, we got seven pastors and elders who shepherd and oversee our congregation. And we were confronted with a tremendous challenge when we were hit with COVID about how to properly and best shepherd our people. Probably the biggest surprise to me during that time that was unexpected for me, for our elders, and for pastors everywhere, I found out, was the division and confusion that would arise from the Christian community about the issue of how does the church properly relate to government. And that was just an ongoing struggle. Actually, it’s still an ongoing struggle, wouldn’t you say, in our church among our people?
Derek: Yeah, it continues to be.
Cliff: Constantly having to think through this issue. Questions like what is the authority of the government? What’s their jurisdiction? Does the government have authority over the local church? And if so, how much? And so, we were constantly grappling with that issue. As a matter of fact, me, you, Pastor JR at our church, we did many weeks, actually, a series of these very issues. What does the Bible have to say about government in light of this pandemic? We were talking about studying issues that we had never thought of before as Christians. So, we learned a lot of stuff, and I think that wasn’t just with us. That was true of most pastors I was talking to, that we all got kind of blindsided.
Derek: Yeah, it was new to all of us.
Cliff: It was. So, that’s kind of what I wanted to discuss briefly here today as we’re really in the midst or about to embark on a multi-sermon series on the simple topic of what does the Bible have to say about government, or really more specifically, how should the church relate to the government in light of the Bible? And that is a difficult question, and there’s a fine balance there, and that fine balance became crystal clear through this whole COVID experience. And we saw how incredibly divisive this issue was, even in our local church. The pastors at our church, as you know, Derek, we had, when all was said and done and the dust settled, we came up with about eight or nine different factions in our own local church of about 200 people of different, as we talked to our members a month or so into the pandemic, and they were giving us their opinion, and we came up with eight or nine different categories of convictions that they had or beliefs that they had about what the church should be doing, a lot of the pandemic, and even giving us their interpretation of Bible verses of how the church should be relating to the government. And we had disparity. We did not have agreement. It was difficult, and we literally cataloged those into eight or nine different groups, and we had the extremes from some of our members saying that the church can do whatever it wants to, and it doesn’t need to comply with any of these ordinances. We’re just gonna keep doing what we’ve always been doing with no restrictions, and then we had the other end of the spectrum where some of our members were believing, you know what, we need to comply with every ordinance coming down the pike from what the federal government says all the way down to what the local health officials in Santa Clara County say who aren’t even lawmakers. So it was an incredible challenge for us. We did the best that we could. And just in hindsight, here’s some of the lessons I learned. I want to get your feedback as well. What are some of the things that you learned as a shepherd and pastor? But one thing, it’s an important principle, and this is a timeless principle for the church that’s good for us to reflect on. That’s from 1 Corinthians 11 verse 19, where Paul’s talking to the Corinthians, and that was a church that he planted. He was their pastor, but he was also an apostle. He spent a year and a half there. They had some problems, but they believed the gospel. They were Christians. And Paul writes this letter to confront some of their incorrect, some of their wrong behavior and wrong thinking. And one of the main problems that the Corinthian church believers had was that they were divisive, and they were all broken up into different factions. And that’s kind of what this COVID thing did. It broke churches up into factions. And Paul makes this amazing statement as he’s led by the Spirit of God. In 1 Corinthians 11:19, he says, for actually there must be factions or schisms among you. Divisions are necessary. Schisms are necessary. In other words, disagreement is necessary. Different perspectives are necessary. That’s a weird statement. Why are you saying that, Paul? Well, in order that, or for the purpose of, in other words, God is going to use our division, just like he promised in Romans 8:28. He works all things together for good. God is going to use division in the local church over COVID to bring about good. So there must be divisions among you in the church, among believers, in order that those who are approved may have become evident among you. So what Paul’s saying here is, yeah, there has to be divisions and disagreements and debates and a little bit of arguing, because what that does is it’s like a cauldron that’s vetting and fine tuning the truth, and the truth comes to the surface. So that’s always what divisions do in the Christian community, as you have that debate and that back and forth, God’s word always wins in the end. And it vets out the draws, and it vets out the error, and it allows truth to surface. And so, as I look back over 16 months, the truth has surfaced in many ways for us as Christians of how we can make a clear distinction about the role of the church and the role of government. So that’s probably one of the biggest things that I learned, that God is sovereign, He’s in control, and we should always be in a position of ready to learn from the circumstances that we find ourselves in. So how about yourself, Derek, as a shepherd over the last year and four months now, maybe some thoughts or reflections on your part?
Derek: Yeah, I think the biggest thing was, again, seeing the sufficiency of Scripture. So when we got hit with the lockdowns and we had to make decisions about what we were going to do as a church, like you had just mentioned, we felt a little blindsided because we had never experienced something like this before. I had never experienced it, you never experienced it, pastors around us have never experienced it. And so, the temptation was to think, well, we already know what Scripture says about this in a general sense, and about government, we submit to government, and it kind of had this broad, general idea, this vague idea of what we needed to do. We needed to, quote, submit to the government. And actually, what we found out is Scripture says a lot about this particular topic. The temptation was to think about, well, this is new, we know generally what the Scripture is saying, but it’s not going to speak specifically to this issue. And in fact, it did, and it had a lot to say. And I think that was what’s so edifying in our discussions as elders, as we would get together and decide, okay, what are we going to do? What does Scripture actually say about this? To see how much Scripture did say. You find in Acts where Paul himself actually disobeys a local ordinance, you might say. You see, you start to dig into Romans 13, and you start to realize it doesn’t say everything that some Christians are saying it does, and in fact, it says more than others are saying, and we have to discern what it is saying. I think what was big for me is that the government has been ordained by God to uphold what is good. And people, I think, Christians have forgotten what that, the standard by which we judge what is good in its Scripture. So government doesn’t have absolute authority. They can’t. We are to judge, we are able to judge because we have the Word of God, what is truly good, and when the government is upholding the good, and when it is not upholding good, and when it is not using its authority correctly. So I think through this process, through all of our discussions amongst the elders, seeing how, again, just having that reaffirmed that Scripture is sufficient. I remember you doing, part of your sermon was on the laws in the Old Testament regarding infectious disease, and how was that handled? Using the wisdom that God had given Israel to think about how we should consider issues related to COVID, and all of that was so illuminating and enlightening, but there was just so many texts that became immediately relevant if you dug into the Scripture and didn’t just assume that you knew what it was saying, but rather said, okay, what is this issue? Let’s dig in. Let’s get after it. And I just was so edified by that process to see, again, that Scripture is sufficient for every situation.
Cliff: Yeah, amen. Same with me. Looking back, in this book that I wrote on the government, I need to add a couple of new chapters there because of the glaring omissions I have in there, because the theme of the book, I really camp out on Romans 13, and what is the government, what’s the role of the government? And all Christians, for the most part, if they’re biblical, they agree that we believe in the law, and we need to submit to the law. We need to submit to local government. One thing that is missing in this book is the balance, the other side, where Jesus said in Matthew 22:21, publicly, when he was asked about a political issue, and by the way, he didn’t skirt a political issue. Jesus actually talked about politics, so sometimes we get accused of, you can’t talk about politics? Oh, yes, I can, because Scripture is sufficient and Scripture addresses everything in our life, including political issues. So that’s not off the table for us. So Jesus responded to this political question about the spiritual domain versus Caesar’s domain, and Jesus gave this simple, amazing statement with perfect balance, where he told the people, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and render to God the things that are God’s. And for the most part, that’s all I emphasized in the book that I wrote on government, is render the things that belong to Caesar. But I did not focus on or talk about the second part of Jesus’ statement, render to God the things that are God’s. So in other words, the human government doesn’t have free reign and 100% authority over our lives. There’s a balance. There’s the domain of God’s realm. The church has its jurisdiction, and there needs to be a balance there.
And that’s what we were confronted with with the pandemic is in March, it hits, and then the government’s issuing these decrees at a federal level, and then state governments are giving their decrees, and then even local counties and cities are giving other decrees as well. And the initial Christian response, almost universally, was Romans 13, we need to obey the government, Romans 13. That was pretty much all I was hearing for at least the first month. No one virtually that I was talking to that was a religious leader, it was very rare, was saying, oh, Matthew 22, we need the balance. Yes, we need to obey the government, but Jesus also said we need to obey God. Or not many people were quoting from Peter in Matthew 5:29, where he said to the local public officials, we need to obey God rather than men. So there are times and exceptions where we don’t obey the government. And so that really began to heat up. And that’s where we started digging into the scriptures and saying, you know what, we got a lack of balance here, pretty much across the community in the Christian world, it sounds like. And we need to give the proper balance that starts with Jesus’s mandate, render to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, and to God the things that belong to God. Because as I said, we had many Christians who literally would make declarations or tell us personally that, you know what, the government has complete authority over the church. And that is absolutely not true. And so that’s one of the things that we hammered on is let’s look to scripture and see where the government doesn’t have authority over the church. And lo and behold, there are areas where the church has authority that the state does not. And then you have a conflict and then you get into trouble, then you have to make a decision. And that created a lot of fear for people. And you see that in scripture. All these questions, all these dilemmas, all this confusion. I think you see that in the New Testament, where there’s a confusion about, okay, we need to obey the law, but what is the law? Who’s in charge? Who’s the ultimate authority?
And if you look back in the last 16 months in what we’ve been dealing with here in California, here in Santa Clara County, with all these problems and confusion, most of the confusion has happened at the local level, where you’ve got a health ordinance official in our city or county who is requiring of something different than what the federal government is saying, or the CDC. Oh, you don’t need to wear masks anymore in this situation or scenario. Or the federal government says the same thing. Oh, churches, you can open and worship freely, because that’s what the Constitution says. But then despite the fact the federal government says that, you got local government and the California government saying, no, you can’t. I don’t care what the federal government says, you can’t do it. And we actually see that in the Bible. That’s where, when you’re talking about scriptural sufficiency, those scenarios are there and they help us, they guide us. So I’m saying that probably the biggest problem were local officials who were in conflict with federal level in the New Testament. That’s exactly true in the days of Jesus. The local Jews who had authority that was limited, they were in conflict with Pilate and his federal rule, and they butted heads. Herod, who had local limited authority, he was also in conflict with Roman law, where the Apostle Paul had freedom and rights as a Roman citizen, and yet Herod is trying to undermine that. So the Apostle Paul, as he goes from city to city planting churches, he’s a Roman citizen. He has complete rights because he was born as a Roman citizen, and yet depending upon these different cities and the local officials and their biases and prejudices and how much they despise or hate Christianity, they are just making up laws on the fly, trying to short-circuit Paul’s ministry or throw him in prison or chase him out of town or whip him and beat him in total conflict to what federal law provided for Paul. So there was this ongoing battle between local officials and federal officials, and we experienced the exact same thing. We still are. So those are some of the biggest lessons that I was reminded of and learned through this whole process. And so for the next several days here on KFAX, we’re going to be hearing from practical sermons that the elders at Creekside Bible Church did over the course of weeks and months that really helped our people. And these sermons really were catered to questions we were getting from our people.
Derek: Yeah, very specific. And I think one thing I want to add too, in terms of what I’ve learned, sufficiency of Scripture, but also the value of a plurality of elders. We on our elder team had differences of opinion that were actually reflective of how our congregation was in terms of the nine categories that you mentioned. And that actually worked out to create a remarkable balance because we were forced to think about these issues and debate these issues among us. And those differences of perspectives and opinions brought us to the Scripture and actually brought about great clarity because you had these differences of, you had different people on different places of the spectrum, and that kind of tension, if I can say that, enabled us to go to Scripture, gain clarity, and to see things truly from a biblical perspective. And there’s a great balance among us. What would it have been like if there would have just been one of us with just our one perspective? I’m not sure it would have gone as well as it did because we had that multiple member team group of elders. So that was a valuable lesson I learned as well, just as I think about local churches and what’s necessary to manage and shepherd the church well. Well, Scripture tells us that we need a multiplicity of elders. We learned very soon, very quickly as this went on, how valuable that is.
Cliff: Amen. And God was gracious to our church because at the time we had eight elders, and if we were not patient, if we weren’t praying, searching the Scripture, referring to one another, it could have gotten pretty ugly. But in God’s grace, it was arduous, it took time, there was some wrangling and wrestling going on, but out of difference in love and patience for one another, we were committed to, we believe the Spirit of God is going to bring some unity and clarity for us because we have a very specific job and that is shepherd our people. And be obedient to the Scriptures and find the balance and we’re going to trust God and we started making decisions just week by week, not planning ahead, three months ahead of time, just waiting on the Spirit and God was gracious. And as you and I, we work at the and serve at the Cornerstone Seminary up in Vallejo, so we have a network of pastors that we know from all over the place. And so we were talking to them, getting insight from other churches and elder teams and they had the same problem. They had a tremendous diversity of opinion even on their elder teams and they had to work through it. And so God was gracious and so when you’re patient, being obedient to Philippians 2, deferring to one another, loving one another, maintaining the same spirit, keeping your eye on the right priorities, honoring Christ, being obedient to His Word, being in prayer, being patient, loving your people, God honored that. And He is committed to preserving the unity of the body of Christ. So once again, that’s a testimony to the sufficiency of Scripture. God’s Word has the answers even in the most difficult and time trials that we’re confronted with.
Derek: Amen. And that is a great place to stop. We want to thank you for joining us on this special edition of the With All Wisdom podcast. Again, we would point your attention to WithAllWisdom.org where you will find a large and growing collection of resources that will help you apply biblical truth to your everyday life. We look forward to seeing you again next time.
