When Ribeye Becomes Doritos

You can listen to some of the best preaching in the world and become harder to pastor.

More informed. More opinionated. More capable of spotting everyone else’s theological problems. Yet increasingly difficult to correct, unwilling to serve, and detached from the people Christ has placed directly in front of you.

I’ve watched it happen. And what concerns me is that the teaching itself is often good.

I’m talking about men like Voddie Baucham, Paul Washer, and John MacArthur. Men I greatly admire and have benefited from tremendously. Faithful men opening the Word of God and feeding people substantial truth.

So why does one Christian hear that teaching and become more humble, grounded, and useful to his church, while another hears the same teaching and becomes increasingly suspicious, argumentative, and isolated?

I keep coming back to a strange analogy.

Sometimes ribeye becomes Doritos.

Bear with me. I know that sounds odd. But I think it helps explain something we need to take seriously.

The ribeye is not the problem

We have access to an extraordinary amount of faithful teaching. I can pull out my phone and listen to gifted preachers from several generations. I can read books written by men who spent decades studying subjects I may never have the time or ability to study at their level.

That is a gift. I want Christians taking advantage of it.

Read the books. Listen to the sermons. Study theology. My concern has nothing to do with keeping Christians from learning outside their local church.

My concern is what happens when those resources become a substitute for being discipled within it.

Imagine being served a good ribeye. There’s nothing wrong with the food. It’s substantial and nourishing. Much of the teaching I’m describing is exactly that. This is not theological junk food. False teachers peddling nonsense are another conversation entirely.

But good food can be consumed badly.

The truth hasn’t changed. The sermon hasn’t somehow become false. What has changed is how the person receives it, what he does with it, and whether anyone has access to his life to help him apply it faithfully.

He keeps consuming, but the fruit in his life bears little resemblance to the truth he’s taking in.

That’s what I mean when I say the ribeye has become Doritos. He has developed an appetite for theological consumption while neglecting the life of obedience that theology requires. And now that healthy nutritional steak is doing nothing more for them than furthering their unhealth.

Christ gave us a table

The New Testament does not describe Christian maturity as an individual gathering the best theological information he can find. Christ gave us the church. In Ephesians 4:11 through 16, Christ gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints and build up his body.

And what is the goal? Maturity. Stability. Speaking the truth in love. A body growing together as each part does its work. Read that passage carefully. The teachers are equipping saints who belong to one another. The growth happens throughout the body.

The same pattern runs through the New Testament. Christians devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers in Acts 2:42. They stir one another up to love and good works in Hebrews 10:24 and 25. They teach and admonish one another in Colossians 3:16. They bear one another’s burdens in Galatians 6:2.

They confess sin, pray, serve, forgive, encourage, correct, and suffer together.

Then Hebrews 13:17 tells believers to obey their leaders and submit to them because those leaders watch over their souls as men who will give an account. That requires identifiable sheep and identifiable shepherds.

Your favorite podcast preacher does not know you. He does not know your marriage. He does not see the patterns in your life. He does not know when your theological conviction is masking pride or when your concern for holiness has become self righteousness. He cannot see whether the doctrines you’re consuming are producing patience, gentleness, and love toward the people who live with you.

A faithful local pastor can look you in the eye and say, “Brother, I think you are wrong.”

You can turn off a sermon when it gets uncomfortable. Faithful membership calls you to stay in the conversation. And that accountability goes both ways. Pastors are under the Word they preach. They must receive correction too. Peter commands elders to shepherd willingly and by example, without domineering over those entrusted to them (1 Peter 5:1 through 3).

The table belongs to Christ. Every one of us answers to him.

Information is not the same thing as formation

You may learn more theological information from your library than from your pastor.

That is not necessarily a problem.

You may listen to ten hours of teaching during the week while your pastor preaches for forty five minutes on Sunday. You may know certain subjects better than he does. None of that means something is wrong.

The issue is what you mean by growth.

Are you learning more facts? Or are you becoming more faithful with what you already know?

A book can teach you. It cannot shepherd you. A podcast can expose sin. It cannot exercise church discipline. A recorded sermon can explain the Lord’s Supper. It cannot gather you with your congregation to receive it.

A preacher thousands of miles away may describe your error with remarkable precision. But he cannot sit across the table, listen to your explanations, and help you see how that error is working itself out in your marriage. You can listen to twenty sermons a week and still be functionally unpastored. You can know Greek words, quote Puritans, and follow every theological controversy online while being almost impossible for anyone in your actual life to correct.

We ought to be very careful about calling that maturity.

Our Particular Baptist forefathers understood the necessity of life together. The Second London Baptist Confession says Christ commands believers to “walk together in particular societies, or churches, for their mutual edification.” It later says believers are “bound to join themselves to particular churches” when they have the opportunity (26.5; 26.12).

That is part of the Christian life itself.

The local church changes how we hear truth

Here is where the analogy begins to make sense.

A healthy local church helps us put what we learn into practice. It exposes our imbalance. It brings our convictions into contact with people who need more from us than a correct answer.

When I sit under pastors who know me, worship alongside Christians who know me, serve people who inconvenience me, forgive people who irritate me, and receive correction I would rather avoid, all that theology has somewhere to go. It gets worked into an actual Christian life.

One danger of consuming teaching on my own terms is that I always get to choose the menu.

If I love apologetics, I can consume apologetics constantly. If I love eschatology, I can live there. If I’m fascinated by biblical masculinity, I can listen to sermon after sermon about masculinity. If I’m concerned about cultural compromise, I can spend every spare hour listening to teachers expose it.

Those subjects matter. But my favorite subject is not the whole counsel of God. The local church has a way of making me eat things I didn’t order.

My pastor may preach about forgiveness when I would rather hear about Calvinism. A struggling brother may need three hours of my Saturday when I wanted to finish a theology book. Coming to the Lord’s Table may confront me with the bitterness I’ve been nursing toward someone sitting twelve feet away.

Church discipline reminds me that doctrine has consequences. Corporate prayer requires me to bring my needs before God alongside other needy people. Singing with elderly saints reminds me that the kingdom of God did not begin with my generation. Serving children reminds me that the church does not exist for my intellectual stimulation.

This is where patience, humility, and love have to become more than subjects I understand.

Christianity on a screen cannot reproduce that life together.

The Frankenstein Christian

This brings me to another pattern I’ve seen. I call it the Frankenstein Christian.

He has assembled himself from selected pieces of several teachers.

He gets his teaching on the family from Voddie Baucham, holiness from Paul Washer, the church from John MacArthur, apologetics from Jeff Durbin, eschatology from John Piper, politics from Al Mohler, and masculinity from Doug Wilson.

Learning from several men is not the problem. I do that myself. Neither is this list a blanket endorsement of everything each man teaches.

The problem is that this Christian has appointed himself the sole judge of how all those pieces fit together, while keeping the people who actually know him at a distance.

Nobody is allowed to question the finished product.

There is no shepherd helping him see where one emphasis has swallowed another. No congregation pressing his theological ideas into the ordinary demands of love. No mature brother whose correction he will seriously consider.

Someone needs to be able to say, “Yes, brother, that doctrine is true. But you are applying it terribly.”

Without that, he can become extremely knowledgeable and increasingly malformed.

Take Voddie Baucham’s teaching on the family. He called fathers to take responsibility for discipling their homes. His book Family Shepherds grew out of meetings with men in his own church. That setting matters. This was instruction given within the life of a congregation.

Baucham also spoke of the family, church, and state as distinct jurisdictions. Recognizing the authority of one does not erase the authority of the others.

Yet I’ve encountered people who consume teaching on the family while maintaining a very low view of the local church. They rightly recognize a father’s responsibility, then begin treating his authority as though it makes the household answerable to no one else.

Family worship becomes more formative than corporate worship. The father functions as though his spiritual leadership replaces the shepherding of the church. The family’s preferences determine whether it participates in the body.

Eventually, the church exists to support the family’s plans, while the family feels little responsibility to give itself to the church.

A father should lead his home. He and his household also need the body of Christ.

The same distortion can happen with teaching on holiness and self examination. Received within a life of assurance, fellowship, pastoral care, and patient sanctification, it can be tremendously helpful. Selectively consumed by someone isolated from those things, it can feed endless introspection.

Teaching on discernment can help a Christian recognize error. It can also be misused by someone whose primary spiritual activity has become finding everyone who is wrong.

These are distortions in the hearer. They do not follow simply because someone listened to a particular preacher.

In fact, the ministries of men I’ve mentioned point Christians back to the church. Grace to You explicitly describes its ministry as a complement to the local church rather than a substitute. Paul Washer’s The Essential Means of Grace addresses Scripture, prayer, and participation in the life and ministry of the local church as God’s provisions for growth in godliness.

We ought to listen when the teachers we admire tell us we need more than their teaching.

The church is not icing on the cake of the Christian life

Life in the local church is not an optional addition for Christians who happen to enjoy being involved.

I’ve described it this way: the church is not icing on the cake of the Christian life, it is the cake. But let me stay with the table analogy, because I think it makes the point more clearly. Christ is the feast. His Word is the food. And the local church is the table at which he has ordinarily appointed his people to eat together. There he provides preaching, prayer, the ordinances, shepherding, correction, and fellowship. There he gives us brothers and sisters with gifts we do not possess and needs we are called to meet.

John Calvin used language that would make many modern evangelicals uncomfortable. Speaking of the visible church as our mother, he wrote, “Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives” (Institutes, 4.1.4).

We do not graduate from needing the church.

1 Corinthians 12 describes believers as members of one body. The eye cannot tell the hand it has no need of it. Knowledge does not make us exempt from that dependence. Neither does a well stocked library.

The Christian who says, “I have Christ, Scripture, and good preaching online. Why do I need the church?” has misunderstood all three.

The Christ he claims to love loves his bride. The Scripture he claims to obey commands life in the body. The faithful preaching he listens to should lead him toward obedience to those commands.

And we need to press this further. A person can affirm everything I’ve just said, attend every Sunday, and still keep the congregation at arm’s length.

You can be present without allowing yourself to be known. You can listen without receiving correction. You can appreciate the church while arranging your life so that it asks very little of you.

Weekly attendance does not fulfill every command to love, serve, forgive, and bear with one another. Because, church is not a service that you go to on the Lord’s day. That is the gathering of “the church”. Church is not a sermon, singing, prayers, and communion. Those are merely elements that God uses as a means of grace amongst the church.

Eat the steak at the table

So listen to the sermons. Read the books. Download the lectures. Study church history. Learn theology. Eat the ribeye. But eat it at the table.

Let those resources supplement a Christian life firmly rooted in a healthy local church. Be known. Let faithful pastors shepherd you. Serve people who cannot advance your platform or improve your theological knowledge. Receive the Lord’s Supper with your congregation. Allow brothers and sisters to see your weaknesses.

When a mature Christian challenges one of your convictions or applications, give him more than a link to your favorite preacher. Listen. Consider whether he has seen something in your life that the man on your screen cannot see. And stay long enough for people to know whether your theology is producing holiness.

If you are learning more information from outside resources than you receive on Sunday morning, that may be perfectly fine. But if those resources have become your substitute for being taught, corrected, and cared for within the body, something needs to change.

Perhaps your church is failing to provide faithful teaching and shepherding. That is a serious problem. Perhaps you are keeping a healthy church at a distance while expecting it to produce the benefits of a life you have not actually entered into. That is a serious problem too. Sometimes both need attention.

The answer requires an honest look at the church and an honest look at yourself.

Who knows you well enough to challenge you? Whose burdens are you carrying? Who can tell you that you’re wrong and expect you to seriously consider it? What happens when obeying the truth interrupts the time you had set aside to study it? And simply saying that other Christians, family members and friends are giving you that, is a cop-out. A curated echo chamber of fellowship is a manipulation of what I’m talking about. Your Christian family members play a role In your formation. Your Christian friends who go to other churches are a tremendous blessing. However, they are only a part of God’s design for your sanctification. The local church and its members are also as vital.

Those questions tell us something a reading list cannot. Do not confuse consuming Christian content with living the Christian life. Your favorite preacher may serve you an excellent steak. Thank God for him. Receive it with gratitude. But don’t use his teaching to excuse yourself from the very life that teaching calls you to live.

Eat the steak. Stay at the table. There and only there can this feast be properly digested. Do not abandon the table Christ has set and congratulate yourself on eating ribeye while your soul lives on Doritos.