The reason for this thread is that I am on a quest.
I have been looking for Christians who have had similar experiences to mine and have come to the same conclusions. Hopefully, to find people who walk in the same spirit as me, and to be able to support and encourage each other.
I will give you these two scriptures and let you research, pray, and meditate for more on your own. I know the whole thing about "there is no such thing as a perfect church" and "the church is a hospital for sinners", and "if you find the perfect church, don't join it because then it won't be perfect". Please avoid all the cliches and stereotypes.
Matthew 5:48 and Ephesians 5:27 are just a few reasons I pursue perfection. I won't copy and paste scriptures for you. Those tactics are fruitless. I doubt many people go through those lists.
I know what people think about perfection, but that shouldn't preclude them from acting beyond reproach as God's Spirit prompts them.
It occurred to me that maybe, since the church is basically corrupt and too ill to walk with God, in my view, there is a faction of people who are still committed to waiting out this spirit of evil that has taken over the organized body of religion, hoping for revival. They obey the scriptures of meeting with "believers" until the true believers can figure out how to identify each other and become serious about the calling that Christ has placed on their lives.
I recently interacted with a "bishop" of the new Global Methodist Church. He left what he calls the evil of the United Methodist Church to begin this brand new denomination. The people starting this new "moral" church are the same people who allowed the old denomination to become corrupt financially and sexually.
He insisted that I should be a part of an organized church, preferably the GMC (Because it is of the John Wesley tradition. He loves the word "tribe".), and obey the chain of command and bureaucracy.
He never explained how denominations relate to 1 Corinthians 1:12.
In other words, they used to belong to the true church when the UMC used to be healthy, and let it become evil, and now they belong to the new, healthy church. I guess if that church is recognized as bad, they will start a new healthy church, and on and on.
It reminds me of when I was accused of being a church butterfly by people who, years later, left their churches.
So, does anybody here belong to a healthy church? I have never met anyone who doesn't think poorly of and make excuses for their own churches.
The church where I got saved, the pastor patted me on the back, and that was the extent of my discipleship.
The counsel I have received here on this site is that I am just looking for someone to blame for my personal problems, so I've already heard that. We will call that "Stereotype #1" to save time. Just post Stereotype #1 and don't make me read anything more. I've heard it all.
Here were my church choices over the past 50-some years:
1) A married junior pastor who seduced the married women he was supposed to be counseling.
2) A senior pastor who covered up a junior pastor seducing women he was supposed to be counseling and let him start a new church instead of calling the police.
3) That same junior pastor, starting a new congregation with my friends.
4) Me and my wife attending this church, recognizing something was amiss because the pastor was running the church on his personality and not the Spirit of God, and leaving this church.
5) My friends deriding us for leaving because we had no "evidence" of wrongdoing.
6) My "friends" discovering the truth about the pastor and ignoring what they said to and about us.
7) Us finding a church with another pastor being adulterous.
8) Us finding and leaving another church running on the personality of the pastor, which fell apart years later.
9) Us finding a church with a private school for our children. The school admittedly hired teachers out of a sense of ministry. One teacher had severe mental issues, but the school overall was incompetent and allowed cheating and misbehavior. We left that church. The school fell apart, and the principal of the school acknowledged we were right, only years later, and the pastor had fired her in the meantime for trying to clean it up.
10) Churches that wouldn't address grievances or follow Matthew 18. They didn't allow or deal with dissent.
11) Churches that allowed cliques, gossip, backbiting, destroying of relationships, etc...
12) Churches that allowed shacking up.
13) Embezzlement.
14) Extreme materialism with the pastor.
15) Definite racism.
16) A promise that their church wasn't a Word of Faith church, and then the next Sunday, being told by the pastor about a man who didn't want to tithe because of financial hardship, tithed anyway, and that next year, bought a recreational vehicle. The pastor then told the congregation that if they started tithing, he would return their money if things didn't go well for them.
17) Churches where members don't even try to understand the Bible.
18) Parents with children who had severe mental and physical retardation, being encouraged to put as much money as they could into large Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets to prove their faith and get their children healed.
19) "Christians" in my family telling us about gold dust falling from the ceiling and miracles occurring in groups like "Women Aglow". Prophets, prophetesses, prophecies, words of knowledge, tongues, and interpretations, phony gold tooth miracles, other false miracles, false teachings, declarations of demonic possession and deliverances, declarations of healings without evidence,
20) Witnessing ministries like Jehovah's Witnesses, Joel Osteen, Mormonism, The PTL Club, Charisma Magazine, The Christian Broadcast Network, Paul Crouch and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, more Charismatic preachers than you can shake a stick at, and on and on... The point being, they thrive while barely being challenged.
21) Most recently, a church that rejected my appeal for a very MINOR bit of help with my wife, who has dementia. No "Christian" in our ten years of dealing with dementia has ever asked what my wife is experiencing or made a serious attempt at finding out if they can help. They do, however, ask how she is. They are satisfied when I say, "She's in good spirits." I never say anything different, and no one has noticed.
The closest they come to telling me they would like to help is that they aren't good at texting. (In a text.)
At this site, Christian Chat, I only see vain arguments, quarrels, and members talking past each other in petty pursuits. I don't see resolution or communication, much less a body working together. If there is anyone here looking for solutions, I haven't found them. Just page after page of blather.
I guess this is my last-ditch effort, hoping that word can get around and maybe I can find one or two people who can relate. You would have to repent of being a member here.
Maybe I'll get banned. If I do, I'll have my answer.
The first person who says, "I'm sorry for the things you've gone through", will be called out for not reading this post seriously. I'm not looking for sympathy; I'm looking for Christians who agree. I won't fight. If you tell me you belong to a healthy church, I will require you to give me the email of your pastor, or I will call you out for being a liar and a hypocrite. We can figure out a way to privately exchange emails.
"I'm sorry for what you've gone through" can be "Sterotype #2."
"I'm praying for you" is "Stereotype #3".
I don't need to know you are praying for me. Pray in private. God knows when you ask something of Him and what you pray for daily. If you use this stereotype, just know that I am picturing you with your thumbs under your armpits, flapping your elbows as everyone online reads that you "care".
I'm looking for people who have the creativity that comes from God.
Spoiler alert: You will most probably have years of journaling things that never get discussed in church or even in public. You will have plenty of anecdotes of your own. You will have solutions in mind as you read this.
I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU GO ALONG TO GET ALONG IN THE "CHURCH" AND HAVEN'T KNOWN WHAT TO DO!!
I have been looking for Christians who have had similar experiences to mine and have come to the same conclusions. Hopefully, to find people who walk in the same spirit as me, and to be able to support and encourage each other.
I will give you these two scriptures and let you research, pray, and meditate for more on your own. I know the whole thing about "there is no such thing as a perfect church" and "the church is a hospital for sinners", and "if you find the perfect church, don't join it because then it won't be perfect". Please avoid all the cliches and stereotypes.
Matthew 5:48 and Ephesians 5:27 are just a few reasons I pursue perfection. I won't copy and paste scriptures for you. Those tactics are fruitless. I doubt many people go through those lists.
I know what people think about perfection, but that shouldn't preclude them from acting beyond reproach as God's Spirit prompts them.
It occurred to me that maybe, since the church is basically corrupt and too ill to walk with God, in my view, there is a faction of people who are still committed to waiting out this spirit of evil that has taken over the organized body of religion, hoping for revival. They obey the scriptures of meeting with "believers" until the true believers can figure out how to identify each other and become serious about the calling that Christ has placed on their lives.
I recently interacted with a "bishop" of the new Global Methodist Church. He left what he calls the evil of the United Methodist Church to begin this brand new denomination. The people starting this new "moral" church are the same people who allowed the old denomination to become corrupt financially and sexually.
He insisted that I should be a part of an organized church, preferably the GMC (Because it is of the John Wesley tradition. He loves the word "tribe".), and obey the chain of command and bureaucracy.
He never explained how denominations relate to 1 Corinthians 1:12.
In other words, they used to belong to the true church when the UMC used to be healthy, and let it become evil, and now they belong to the new, healthy church. I guess if that church is recognized as bad, they will start a new healthy church, and on and on.
It reminds me of when I was accused of being a church butterfly by people who, years later, left their churches.
So, does anybody here belong to a healthy church? I have never met anyone who doesn't think poorly of and make excuses for their own churches.
The church where I got saved, the pastor patted me on the back, and that was the extent of my discipleship.
The counsel I have received here on this site is that I am just looking for someone to blame for my personal problems, so I've already heard that. We will call that "Stereotype #1" to save time. Just post Stereotype #1 and don't make me read anything more. I've heard it all.
Here were my church choices over the past 50-some years:
1) A married junior pastor who seduced the married women he was supposed to be counseling.
2) A senior pastor who covered up a junior pastor seducing women he was supposed to be counseling and let him start a new church instead of calling the police.
3) That same junior pastor, starting a new congregation with my friends.
4) Me and my wife attending this church, recognizing something was amiss because the pastor was running the church on his personality and not the Spirit of God, and leaving this church.
5) My friends deriding us for leaving because we had no "evidence" of wrongdoing.
6) My "friends" discovering the truth about the pastor and ignoring what they said to and about us.
7) Us finding a church with another pastor being adulterous.
8) Us finding and leaving another church running on the personality of the pastor, which fell apart years later.
9) Us finding a church with a private school for our children. The school admittedly hired teachers out of a sense of ministry. One teacher had severe mental issues, but the school overall was incompetent and allowed cheating and misbehavior. We left that church. The school fell apart, and the principal of the school acknowledged we were right, only years later, and the pastor had fired her in the meantime for trying to clean it up.
10) Churches that wouldn't address grievances or follow Matthew 18. They didn't allow or deal with dissent.
11) Churches that allowed cliques, gossip, backbiting, destroying of relationships, etc...
12) Churches that allowed shacking up.
13) Embezzlement.
14) Extreme materialism with the pastor.
15) Definite racism.
16) A promise that their church wasn't a Word of Faith church, and then the next Sunday, being told by the pastor about a man who didn't want to tithe because of financial hardship, tithed anyway, and that next year, bought a recreational vehicle. The pastor then told the congregation that if they started tithing, he would return their money if things didn't go well for them.
17) Churches where members don't even try to understand the Bible.
18) Parents with children who had severe mental and physical retardation, being encouraged to put as much money as they could into large Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets to prove their faith and get their children healed.
19) "Christians" in my family telling us about gold dust falling from the ceiling and miracles occurring in groups like "Women Aglow". Prophets, prophetesses, prophecies, words of knowledge, tongues, and interpretations, phony gold tooth miracles, other false miracles, false teachings, declarations of demonic possession and deliverances, declarations of healings without evidence,
20) Witnessing ministries like Jehovah's Witnesses, Joel Osteen, Mormonism, The PTL Club, Charisma Magazine, The Christian Broadcast Network, Paul Crouch and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, more Charismatic preachers than you can shake a stick at, and on and on... The point being, they thrive while barely being challenged.
21) Most recently, a church that rejected my appeal for a very MINOR bit of help with my wife, who has dementia. No "Christian" in our ten years of dealing with dementia has ever asked what my wife is experiencing or made a serious attempt at finding out if they can help. They do, however, ask how she is. They are satisfied when I say, "She's in good spirits." I never say anything different, and no one has noticed.
The closest they come to telling me they would like to help is that they aren't good at texting. (In a text.)
At this site, Christian Chat, I only see vain arguments, quarrels, and members talking past each other in petty pursuits. I don't see resolution or communication, much less a body working together. If there is anyone here looking for solutions, I haven't found them. Just page after page of blather.
I guess this is my last-ditch effort, hoping that word can get around and maybe I can find one or two people who can relate. You would have to repent of being a member here.
Maybe I'll get banned. If I do, I'll have my answer.
The first person who says, "I'm sorry for the things you've gone through", will be called out for not reading this post seriously. I'm not looking for sympathy; I'm looking for Christians who agree. I won't fight. If you tell me you belong to a healthy church, I will require you to give me the email of your pastor, or I will call you out for being a liar and a hypocrite. We can figure out a way to privately exchange emails.
"I'm sorry for what you've gone through" can be "Sterotype #2."
"I'm praying for you" is "Stereotype #3".
I don't need to know you are praying for me. Pray in private. God knows when you ask something of Him and what you pray for daily. If you use this stereotype, just know that I am picturing you with your thumbs under your armpits, flapping your elbows as everyone online reads that you "care".
I'm looking for people who have the creativity that comes from God.
Spoiler alert: You will most probably have years of journaling things that never get discussed in church or even in public. You will have plenty of anecdotes of your own. You will have solutions in mind as you read this.
I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU GO ALONG TO GET ALONG IN THE "CHURCH" AND HAVEN'T KNOWN WHAT TO DO!!
