Online COVID Church, Creepy Copeland, Advice

Show open: tithes for churches closed by COVID

• Should Christians keep tithing and giving, including to overseas churches, while buildings are closed by COVID?

The show opens with a Christianity Today article: with African churches closed by the coronavirus, Christians are debating whether to keep sending tithe money overseas. Dan explains his church wires funds monthly through its American headquarters and is not worried, noting a closed building does not stop a pastor needing to eat. The hosts observe tithes are reportedly down in many places.

Online sermons and family discipleship

• Is online church a valid substitute for gathering in person?

The hosts discuss preaching to cameras during lockdown. One host finds online sermons let his family pause mid-message to check his kids' understanding without disrupting anyone. Dan says he enjoys being part of the conversation while his own previously recorded sermon plays. They agree people miss people, not sermons: teaching is available anywhere, but presence is not.

Leading worship on video is awkward

One host describes leading worship through video as awkward beyond belief: songs die out into silence with only his wife and kids present. The hosts observe that smaller churches may weather the shutdown better than large, staff-heavy churches already cutting salaries, since most big-church staff exists for community programming that cannot happen.

Rend Collective's living-room worship and the local church

Ben describes watching Rend Collective's socially distant worship club, four people singing in a living room streamed from phones, and finding it easy to join in because it felt participatory rather than produced. He argues mid-grade production creates an awkward middle where people cannot tell whether to participate or observe. He closes with an extended reflection on the irreplaceable local church: millions teach better than his pastors, but it matters that Dan said it, studied it, and cares for his people.

Church budgets in the shutdown

The hosts return to money: churches in a pinch need faithful giving, not above-and-beyond giving, and buildings still cost money even unused. They joke about savings on heating, cooling, and donuts, and note online giving keeps flowing, including from people who left the church years ago and never cancelled their recurring gifts.

Ten-year anniversary greatest hits

The show is celebrating ten years, and Ben has been posting a favorite clip a day to Facebook through April. They reminisce about the Methuselah-went-to-Nineveh song, which earned somebody five dollars and remains a career highlight for its writer, and the poo-tracker bit about tracking flushed waste in England, possibly from the same episode.

Copeland's wind of God and the fallen-world debate

The hosts react to a viral video of Kenneth Copeland rebuking COVID-19, blowing the wind of God at it while his congregation repeats him, and to a TikTok pile-on treating the clip as representative Christianity. They touch on Franklin Graham's fallen-world comment and recall the televangelist era, Jesse Duplantis, Oral Roberts, and Robert Tilton, and how old TBN-style programming shaped the public image of the faith.

Petition versus presumption; platitudes that wound

• What is the difference between petitioning God and presumptuously commanding outcomes in his name?

The hosts draw a line between petitioning God, asking as his people for him to step in, and presuming to wield his power, as with Moses striking the rock: calling on God to heal is biblically legitimate, telling is not. They argue empty reassurances like God's got this sound callous to the grieving and misrepresent God's heart, since Jesus never minimized suffering, weeping over Jerusalem and at Lazarus's death. Boova recounts being told God's got a plan at eighteen after his father's heart attack and how it felt like spit in his face. The alternative they propose is embodied love: texting neighbors before grocery runs and dropping supplies at doors.

Parking-lot Easter and Scoop the Loop

• Should Dan's church hold a parking-lot Easter service during the shutdown?

Dan is torn over a planned parking-lot Easter service: he has no fear of the virus but worries about ruining the church's witness when neighbors drive by on their way to Walmart, though his informal poll shows people overwhelmingly prefer the livestream anyway. Boova recounts attending Des Moines' Scoop the Loop cruise night, around a hundred cars and lighthearted until groups gathered outside cars and police intervened. They play the Copeland wind-of-God audio and dissolve into spirit-wind jokes.

Don't stop tithing and Dan's Copeland LP

The hosts note Copeland also preached don't you stop tithing, a true principle about giving from a compromised messenger. Ben introduces the idea that the Holy Spirit deals in willies, a physical discernment sense that something is spiritually off. Then Dan confesses that around 1983 he bought Copeland's full-length LP for the song Blow the Trumpet in Zion and played it in his dorm room, and the hosts roast the cloud-filled album cover. Mike reflects on never understanding the televangelist gig as a way to make money.

Downtown errands and the pope rumor

Ben recounts driving downtown on a Friday expecting emptiness and finding crowds, then investigating a food-court gathering driven by a rumor that the pope was in town, supposedly landing in Altoona. The crowd believed the pope was headed to Boova's apartment, leaving Boova to deal with them. Boova says he talked to them about loving their enemies, which segues into the next segment.

Boova does the dishes: loving enemies as action

• How do you love your enemies in concrete action rather than mere feeling?

Boova tells an extended story: a friend had been a jerk to him for days, yet the man stayed on his mind, so Boova went over, cooked eggs, and ended up hand-washing an hour and a half of piled-up dishes without making a show of it, telling the couple it was not about shame. He connects it to his own history with depression, when even one dish felt debilitatingly overwhelming. His thesis: in Scripture love is rarely a feeling word, it is an action verb, and loving enemies costs something and carries real risk of being misunderstood. Ben adds that Jesus was willing to be associated with people like Ben and Buva despite how it looked.

Dan's Atlantic story: releasing enemies in prayer

Asked about his own experience making things right with enemies, Dan recounts pastoring in Atlantic, Iowa, where a few families hated him through the church's shift toward contemporary worship, taking notes in services to catch him in his words. After years of trying to meet and pray with them, he prayed a strange prayer releasing them, and within weeks they had moved away. He calls it one of the most spiritually intense seasons of his life, when he learned prayer and fasting.

Two clean old-folks jokes

Ben tells two jokes from a clean old-folks jokes list, letting the others pick the second: Smitty and Martha's ten-dollar airplane ride, ten dollars is ten dollars, and the old tennis player who would rather have a talking frog than a new wife. Boova is still laughing through the second one.

Easter crucifixion quiz

Ben runs an eleven-question crucifixion quiz for the Easter season: Golgotha, vinegar mixed with gall, David's psalm on the divided clothes, the trilingual superscription, two others crucified, the mockers as all of the above, three hours of darkness, the torn veil and earthquake and opened graves, truly this was the Son of God, Psalm 22, which Boova rescues from left field, and Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. The hosts score one hundred percent against a sixty-nine percent average, with a running gag about Josephus of Arkansas.

Dear LFTP: the alcoholic friend

• How do I keep my sanity dealing with an alcoholic friend who refuses to quit?

Mike reads a listener letter: her friend of five years is an alcoholic who calls drunk late at night, and the writer fears she enables her. Boova comes in strong, addiction stems from trauma and helpers must come with love or back away, then shares his own story: a decade of serious addiction, an alcoholic mother who attempted suicide repeatedly, and Dan offering him counseling that changed everything. Dan relates through his own food addiction; Mike argues for boundaries without abandonment and quotes Ben's maxim that he will always help you do the right thing. They read Secular's advice: try Al-Anon and stop taking drunk calls.

Dear LFTP: the mountain-cabin mistress

• Should the brother tell his wife he secretly housed his former mistress in their cabin?
• Is it ever okay for a third party to tell the wife about the husband's secret?

Mike reads a second letter: the writer's fifty-three-year-old brother, who cheated eight years ago, has secretly housed his former mistress Rachel, now with cancer, in his mountain cabin without telling his wife. The hosts agree he must tell his wife; secrecy turns a possible act of mercy into another betrayal. Mike role-plays the accountability he would expect, and lands on I don't hide bodies: he will help anyone do the right thing but will not cover the wrong one. Secular's advice is to stay out of it, since the ball is in the brother's court.

Outro: the social-distancing hotline

Closing business: a joke about a salt-and-pepper shaker stolen from grandma's, and the reveal of the show's text line, (515) 517-0085, dubbed the Bob Eisenlauer six-feet-away social-distancing hotline. Ben teases big stuff next week and signs off: be faithful in the means, God will handle the ends.