From: alarm@yabbs
To: Faith@yabbs
Subject: re: live/let live
Date: Wed Jul 27 16:26:26 1994
You said,
>I don't however really believe in attending church. I was raised Catholic 
>and saw a lot of hyppocricy in the church.

My couple of pennies goes something like this. 
I think it's too bad that so many people have abandoned the church because 
of the problems in it. I realize that the problems are real, but maybe if 
those who really saw the problems got involved in church we could take 
care of some of them. I did not grow up in a religious household, instead 
I went to church on my own when I was 11 or 12. I had a personal encounter 
with Jesus Christ and accepted him as my savior and tried to be his 
follower. A problem occured when one of the leaders in the church who 
befriended me turned out to be homosexual and tried to molest me. I 
definitely felt sexually abused, but I will not go into the details. I 
never told anyone, I just left the church. Later on I realized that this 
man's sin was not God's fault and I returned to church. More problems 
arose, I left, then later found another church. I felt God calling me but 
didn't know how to follow him. I needed the church to help me learn how to 
follow Jesus. Finally I found a real church that, although it still had 
its hypocrites and other shortcomings, really taught me to be a disciple 
of Jesus. 

Now it happens that I have moved a lot since then and have attended 
several other churches, non of them have been perfect. Now I am preaching 
and ministering in my own church. I have a new vision of the church and 
what it means and what it can mean for people to be a part of it. Jesus 
said, where two or three are gathered there I am in your midst. The church 
is the place where we meet Jesus in a fuller experience than we can have 
on our own. My own metaphor for the church is a detox center for the 
saved. The only way to be saved, cleansed or your sins, made acceptable in 
God's sight is by believing in Jesus and following him. But once
you become a follower of Jesus; a disciple. You are still not perfect this 
side of heaven. We bring our selves into the church and since we are not 
perfect we bring sin and hypocricy into the church just like everyone 
else. The church as a detox center helps us to clean up those areas of our 
lives that we are blind to. Those sins that we do not realize that we have 
can be recognized by others in the church and they can help us to grow. We 
can also help them to grow as we see where they are failing to walk the 
faithful life. Only as a community of believers can we really grow. The 
church is not perfect, but if we are daring enough to be a truthful people 
we will be able to accomplish some good in this world.

thanks for listening to me ramble just a bit,
alarm