“many people choose not to know me, trust me, or hear me.”
That’s not your fault and it’s regrettable that the church as a whole has earned themselves such a stigma in the mind of the common man. I was often greatly irritated while visiting my grandparents or other relatives because we would attend their “fellowships”, and invariably, I’d get overenthusiastically asked if I’d found Jesus by a member of the congregation. Sadly, a truthful “Yes, I’m currently looking into which seminary I plan to attend” was not a sufficient answer at many of the churches I’ve been to, I still had to sit through being re-evangelized to because I mentioned the wrong denomination or suffer being quizzed later as to why I’d shut them down with a polite “go use that zeal for people who haven’t yet been reached” and walked away. This is only one example. Often the most vocal of christians give christianity as a whole, and Christ himself by proxy (in many people’s minds) a bad name. It’s all too common, and I believe many churches needs to tend their own house before embarking on evangelistic crusades and attempting to tend to the houses of others. It would certainly cut down on the bad press.
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Date: 2006-04-03 02:18 pm (UTC)That’s not your fault and it’s regrettable that the church as a whole has earned themselves such a stigma in the mind of the common man. I was often greatly irritated while visiting my grandparents or other relatives because we would attend their “fellowships”, and invariably, I’d get overenthusiastically asked if I’d found Jesus by a member of the congregation. Sadly, a truthful “Yes, I’m currently looking into which seminary I plan to attend” was not a sufficient answer at many of the churches I’ve been to, I still had to sit through being re-evangelized to because I mentioned the wrong denomination or suffer being quizzed later as to why I’d shut them down with a polite “go use that zeal for people who haven’t yet been reached” and walked away. This is only one example. Often the most vocal of christians give christianity as a whole, and Christ himself by proxy (in many people’s minds) a bad name. It’s all too common, and I believe many churches needs to tend their own house before embarking on evangelistic crusades and attempting to tend to the houses of others. It would certainly cut down on the bad press.