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To: mgd3255; RnMomof7
mgd3255:

It may help to review the proper role of the Church. In my reading of your comments, it appears that you think the Church should have as it's primary function some important social purpose, i.e. trying to make everyone "feel good" by meeting their physical and emotional needs. This is understandable since ALL of the large, mainline churches have adopted this "social gospel" focus. While Christians are indeed to show compassion to their fellow man, as motivated by the Gospel, which we do indeed do, this is not the purpose of the church. The PRIMARY function of the church is meeting the SPIRITUAL needs of mankind. The church has a simple teaching and baptizing mission, given by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself just before He ascended into heaven:


A Christian church should strive to proclaim the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible, by which alone man can know the true God and the way to eternal life. That this should be our purpose and commitment rests upon the following statements of the Bible:

We should disavow the position that the church as a body is to promote social and political causes and opinions of men. The individual Christian will indeed show the fruits of faith by his concern for social and political causes wherever they present themselves. Our right of existence as a church, however, is limited by our readiness to say with St. Paul that we are "... determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." (1 Corinthians 2:2)

Again, the focus of the Church, according to the above clear passages, is to attend to the SPIRITUAL needs of the world. Out of Gospel-motivated compassion for our fellow man, individual and/or groups of Christians may join together to meet the social and/or physical needs of suffering peoples, but that is NOT the purpose of the Church.

The joint prayer service was indeed a worship service. I suggest you read the "Faithfulness and Judging" section of my post 95 to help you understand the Scriptural reasons why God wants us to only worship/pray/commune with people who share the same confession of faith. If you do not care to wade through that, please at least consider the following passages by way of explanation:


While I am not a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the LC-MS did the right thing in disciplining Rev. Benke as he transgressed all the above commands.
133 posted on 07/25/2002 3:10:14 PM PDT by FatherOfLiberty
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To: FatherOfLiberty
Another excellent post..
134 posted on 07/25/2002 3:11:50 PM PDT by RnMomof7
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