Posted on 04/23/2022 3:08:57 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
[T]oday’s churches are increasingly offering the same get-out-of-hell-free cards the culture offers; whatever you do is good because you are being "true to yourself" and are "following your heart" and "your truth."
That is not Christianity; that is enhanced 60’s hedonism. Want to be gay? Why not? Want to be a woman, just shave, grow long hair, take hormones, dress up, wear padded bras, and join the Navy and the women's curling team. Want to mess with little kids? Have at it, but make sure parents don’t find out. Want to be an anti-white racist, a cop-hater, a Marxist, or a corrupt pro-Russia politician with a job that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a month because daddy lives in the White House? Go for it. Want to make personal happiness your priority? Why not? After all, what is more important than being happy? Want to avoid being insulted or suffering any form of anxiety? We will move heaven and earth to give you that safe space. Want to shut people up you disagree with? Great, happy to close down our business or website because your delicate sensibilities are offended. Want to deny that Satan exists? Better still. In fact, best.
Too many of our churches have watered down Christianity into a church of cowards, too cowed to speak up. They are told that "Jesus would never behave that way." Jesus behaved exactly that way. He was strong, not wimpy. He got angry, He didn’t slink away when confronted with disbelief and evil. He challenged His followers to give up everything for Him, to be strong and courageous, not to wuss out. He went to the cross for fallen, sinful human beings and never shrank from His mission like many of today’s churches are doing.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Great post on modernism
https://www.assemblyofbishops.org/directories/parishes/
This may help find an Orthodox Church for those searching.
“ Too many of our churches have watered down Christianity into a church of cowards, too cowed to speak up.”
You won’t find that in my church family. You will find many gracious people who tell the unvarnished truth with love and concern.
When it comes to faith in Jesus Christ, some of the most highly intelligent and highly accomplished people I know suddenly turn into infants who don’t know nuthin’ and don’t want to know nuthin’. No preacher in a church can fix this problem of man wanting to stay childish before God, demanding milk forever and not solid food.
How does a pastor balance the need for people to be able to hear the word so that the holy spirit can change them without causing them to close their ears because they are called disgusting when they walk through the door?
No, the stupid, leftist humans who infest churches are killing Christianity.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Most churches don’t have much religion these days, gone are the old hymns and the voice from the pulpit is careful not to offend. They’re more of a community center.
My home church decided 10 years ago to have two services - the ‘casual’ service and then the ‘classic’ service. The classic service had the older congregation, and the causal service attracted the younger crowd.
The older congregants supported the church financially, and for years was the dominate service. But now with time, the two have combined, and the church is suffering as the casual attendees just don’t contribute as much and have little involvement in the church beyond Sunday morning. Sad to watch.
- John Prine
Written 151 years ago!
It’s the responsibility of the congregation to evangelize, not the pastor. The pastoral job is to equip them for evangelism.
It’s sad that so many people think that just having a pastor is enough to fulfil God’s command to evangelize.
Let me tell you, it was one of the most aggravating things in the world to try to organize congregational evangelical outreach only to get told, “Well that’s what we pay you for.”
Ah, another thread complaining about the younger generation.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. Who was it that had the responsibility to teach our generation and decided to shuffle that responsibility off to government schools instead?
About 10 years ago we found a local Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Went to one service and loved it; quickly joined. No woke crap.
BecAus too many churches are a part of “Church Inc.”
Think about all of the Adult Sunday School “programs,” the kid “booklets,” the parenting “series,” the “single person’s study,” the “weight loss group study,” the “community activity study,” etc…why Lifeway was at the forefront of selling these to churches.
We have “conferences” where mega church pastors and Christian authors, podcasters come and speak and then sell their books.
We have multi-campus churches being their own brand piping in the main preacher instead of starting a new separate church.
We have the SBC being plundered in their seminaries and pulpits by the “houng reformists.”
And how is THAT all helping reach the lost?
People have passed off their responsibility before God to evangelize to the pastor, the same way they've passed off their responsibility to care for the poor to the government. Both are wrong.
Both are the responsibility of the individual Christians with the pastors and teachers teaching the Christians to prepare THEM for the work of the ministry.
Ephesians 4:11-14 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Yours is a common account.
You should find a good, Bible-believing, Gospel-centered, evangelical, expository-teaching, mission-focused church. Get involved. Then you should get yourself into a “small group” (Bible study group) that meets regularly.
That’s my advice.
A guy I know goes to a Methodist church nearby. He said they no longer have to tithe because the government gives people food stamps. How do they pay the bills then? Must be money coming down from above. Money that fedgov pays them to relocate “refugees” is my best guess.
My hometown church that I lacked attendance to was built in the early 1600s, First Congregational Church. Church of the Pilgrims. Most of them joined the UCC but last I knew, my hometown church was still autonomous and very conservative.
Now I live in MO and there are no 1st Congregational Churches near me. As far as I know, independent baptist would be the closest thing. We’ve been to a few different churches. Went to a Methodist a few times because that’s what my wife grew up with because her mom went to one. Her mom also went to an Obama rally so I imagine the Methodist church they went to was probably pretty liberal. The one we went to was just boring to me. Everyone there including the preacher were over 60 so it was kind of a sleep fest.
Went to one church in MS and oh boy. Preacher spoke in tongues and when he did, this meek little old woman suddenly jumped up and started running around waving a silky scarf. They had a rock band and the preacher’s son played bass. The preacher’s daughter sang once and the song ended with this thin yet shapely 16 year old girl in a tight sundress moaning “I want to feel you” over and over. Talking about the spirit of Jesus I’m sure. Right after that, the collection plate went around for a second time and all those good ole boys wiped the sweat from their brow and dug deep into those pockets to pay for the sinful thoughts they just had. They were trying to get the parking lot paved for the new church building they had just built.
Went to another tiny church in MO and I just couldn’t understand what the preacher was saying. He had a real back woods MO accent and cried half the time he was up there. It seemed like it was just him and his family and friends of the family. His three daughters would get up there and sing. I think he/they had dreams of the girls going to Nashville or doing the church circuit.
Haven’t been to a church in a while. I suggested going to one nearby and my wife said, “Oh, he’s an a-hole” about the preacher. I didn’t feel like taking her to any church after that.
Churches out here and maybe everywhere tend to be like a social network where you make connections that become financially rewarding. If you don’t go to any church, you’re kind of in a different class that doesn’t get to participate as much in the economy. My neighbor is kind of a long haired biker type and crude. A heathen one might say. He’s locked out in some ways due to his reputation. He walked into the feed store for the first time and the guy said they have nothing there for him. The guy who owns the feed store has family members that own other businesses where my neighbor also can’t do business. I can do business in these places but I have a sneaking suspicion that if I went to the same church as them, I’d get better prices.
The church thing seems like a whole lot of click thing going on that reminds me of high school. People getting together in little groups and segregating themselves for the most part. Some of the groups may interact a little or they may stay totally separate and have animosity towards each other. The focus seems to be more on the network of people than God in a way. Just like in school, I have no desire to join some little click of friends so I pretty much keep to myself but I might go church shopping sometime and see if I can find a group that I think of as normal people and not some club.
“we found a local Orthodox Presbyterian Church.”
In our neck of the woods there’s the Union Cumberland Presbyterian group of churches. The services and sermons are more like the old traditional Baptist churches used to be before modernism crept in. I’ve been in Baptist churches since I was 3 days old, and believe in their Distinctives.
But these Presbyterians do infant baptism and I wouldn’t be able to wrap my head around that until someone can show me that it’s Scriptural.
Tares and Wheat...
Terrible idea.
There are several excellent, local congregations that meet the criteria I just posted, none of them show up in your nice tool that leads people away from God.
Sorry. But true.
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