What bills does the church owe? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
Right now, I’m going through a book on Kindle. To say this book is crazy would be to give it a compliment. Yes. This will be a future review on my blog, but I do note the author does make the case that he used to be a Christian. I do not doubt this. Then at one point the light was shed and now he’s opposed to his former faith greatly.
Online, people like this are common. I wish I had a nickel for each person I meet who says they “Used to be a Christian” and many of them are some of the main opponents I come across. These people fight Christianity with a vengeance, and I suspect it’s because they think they were duped by their church and have a strong vendetta against it.
And in many cases, I think their church did dupe them.
You know what I often read from them? I get the message that they were told they should just have faith. They were denied the right to ask questions. They were told they needed to walk the line or get out. They were treated as if they were the problem. Very rarely do I hear the account of a minister who says “That’s a good question. Let’s do some research and see what we find out.”
Is it any wonder these people leave?
What does this have to do with finances?
We are spending so much on making sure we have the best sound equipment and making sure our youth get to go on special trips and having the carpet looking nice in the church and getting a new camera for video taping services and in themselves, none of these are bad things.
Yet none of them are what the church is really about. The church is meant to equip the saints so that they can glorify God. It is meant to bring a community of worshipers together to the glory of God. Instead, we often turn it into a feel-good service where we can go out and be “Nice Christians.” If you want good ethics, you can turn to a book on philosophy and get that. If you want to bring about the glory of God and salvation for the world, you must have Jesus Christ. The church cannot do that if we are not emphasizing Christ.
Instead, we emphasize ourselves and how we feel.
When someone comes along who doesn’t march to the beat of that drum for whatever reason, we cast them aside. How dare you interrupt our parade! We are here to feel good about ourselves! You’re dragging us out of our comfort zone.
Then, you’ve made an enemy for the church and unfortunately, just as they had accepted Christianity without thinking, they now accept anything else without thinking. The mindset is the same. The allegiance is all that’s changed.
It has been said the cults are the unpaid bills of the church. Fundamentalist atheists and others who abandon Christianity like that leave us then in a financial crisis by comparison.
And the sad part is, we don’t have to be that way. We can be a thinking church and that will not, when done properly, distract us from the joy of the Christian life. Instead, it will, again when done properly, enhance our joy.
Consider it like this. Suppose you have a song that you like. Then you learn something about the song that puts it in a greater context and you realize something incredible about it and then like it even better. That’s the same way it is with our Christian faith. Are we actually saying learning more about God and the Bible will decrease our Christian joy? It is a pitiful faith that thinks the increase of knowledge will lessen the joy of the faith.
Pastors. Think about it. You can have a church where people live responding to their feelings (And don’t you have problems with telling them not to do so when it comes to temptation and the sins of the flesh) or you can have a church that will be informed whose minds will be engaged in their pursuit of Christ. Which one do you want?
When you do this, you will also greatly decrease the number of people who abandon the faith this way.
btw, if your pastor is not informed on these matters at all and does not wish to be informed, I have a great solution to it.
Give him another job.
The church cannot meet the needs of those outside the church if it cannot answer the questions of those within. We are to bring forward a message with confidence. We are not to live in fear of questions. We should welcome them realizing any question gives us a chance to grow in our knowledge. Remember. Knowledge is not the enemy. Ignorance is. Let’s make sure we address not just the church’s emotional, physical, and spiritual needs, but also their intellectual needs.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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