Churches, what’s wrong?

[P31Woman]

Obadiah,

Because you view this Church as your place of employment have you ever considered finding a Church to attend in your off hours/days?

Many people work for one Church but have their membership elsewhere. Sometimes they work and worship in differant denominations. One of my good friends works for a large church in town but joined our small family type Church. She said our style of worship helped her worship.

 

[Obadiah]

Obadiah,

Because you view this Church as your place of employment have you ever considered finding a Church to attend in your off hours/days?

Many people work for one Church but have their membership elsewhere. Sometimes they work and worship in differant denominations. One of my good friends works for a large church in town but joined our small family type Church. She said our style of worship helped her worship.

Thank you, that's an excellent suggestion. The reality is that I am already doing this to some extent and have been for some time now, as well as occasionally visiting new churches when the opportunity comes along just to see what they are doing. I'm probably going to be doing more of this too. I should clarify also that the observations I have talked about here are not necessarily all from the one church either. Many of these things as well as things others have talked about here I've seen and heard of going on in many places.

 

[Obadiah]

I feel preaching prophecy needs to be restored in the church. If more people saw the fulfilling of miracles in the world, they'd work more into wanting to hear how to produce good fruits. They would know that the Heavenly father is God and that Jesus is Lord, and they would love and want to seek the kingdom.

We should teach all the counsel of god. Not 1/4th the counsel, not half the counsel, but all the counsel of God.

See Acts 20:25-27

I think this is a good point. Yet those who are capable of doing this are many times rejected by the powers that be in our churches in favor of the novice with the rock star persona and the spectacular stories of his life of crime and drugs (or some other calamitous malady) that God "saved him from". Don't get me wrong, there is a place for the testimony and ministry of this type of person, but I have to question if it's really God's will for those who followed faithfully from the beginning to be consistently thrown to the curb in preference to this type of person.

I recently watched a man who I know, and who has been called to ministry from a young age decades ago be utterly rejected in favor of the novice rock star type. A man who has unshakable faith and has been used of God in such miracles in the past. Miracles in which there was no denying, even by those in the secular world, that the only explanation was a miracle from God. A man with a proven track record of the ability to teach Christians how to live in a way that they show the fruit of the spirit, and to live that way consistently. Yet church "leadership" rejected him outright without even giving him the opportunity to tell them why he knew God was calling him to this particular church. They chose instead a relatively novice Christian with a checkered past who has a certificate of ordination from an online web site that literally doesn't even require any faith or belief in God to ordain a person. And I've seen this kind of thing happen in more than one church.

 

[Theodore A. Jones]

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

One in particular had a ministry need. God clearly sent someone (at LEAST one) to their congregation who was gifted in the right areas (and He confirmed this with signs and miracles), but the secular minded leaders insisted on looking outside what God had already provided so they could find a "rock star" type person to minister. They did. Now their church, which had been growing tremendously before this, is falling apart spiritually, numerically, and financially. And the person God sent to them? He says he nightly prays that if there is no more use for him in this world that God will take him home while he sleeps. Why do so many of those who profess to believe show no signs of any true belief?

The message of salvation they assume is true is in reality entirely false. Remember it only takes one little pinch of a particular kind of falsehood to destroy the whole deal and it has.

 

[Obadiah]

The message of salvation they assume is true is in reality entirely false. Remember it only takes one little pinch of a particular kind of falsehood to destroy the whole deal and it has.

What would you consider the TRUE message of salvation that they have missed out on?