“..Here is real event: couple comes to church and is met by church member at the entrance who knows they are unmarried and living together. The member scolds them for their lifestyle and the couple leave never having heard a sermon or prayer...”
Yep. Seen it many times too.
Not our job to remove the speck from someone else’s eye when there is a log in ours. That’s the Lord’s job.
We greet them at the door, fully and sincerely welcome em, help em get seated, feel at home, etc....and let the Holy Ghost do the rest. I can practically assure you by the end of one of our services, they are gonna 1) Repent right then and there 2)Leave, and possibly come back after the Lord works on em awhile or 3)Never come back. The point is: no one has to accuse anyone of anything...just let God, be God.
The Lord will never impose Himself on the freewill of mankind, but He will definitely show em the Way if the heart is willing.
When I was a nonchristian attending church services, I was trying to find out what the teaching was, what it was based on, how to figure out its truthfulness with respect to other teachings, basically get at the facts.
I asked an usher what the purpose of all this singing and other stuff was. He said, joyfully, “Worship!” The thing is, I wasn’t there to worship. I was there to find out. It took a lot of digging and very little of what I ran into at church was helpful. But the books on apo-logos helped me a lot, as well as simple books on historicity.
And then, when I was a regular worshipper I ran into [and continue to run into] people who worship but never answered any of those questions about Jesus, Who He is, why He was put to death, almost none of it examined. In many ways an embracing of ignorance, accompanied with plenty of arrogance & misplaced judgementalism towards those who do investigate. It’s almost like these people never read what the Bereans did when Paul preached to them.