A week or so ago after looking at the folks in the pews, I mentioned to Dan there was an empty Nursing home somewhere. The leaders might want to consider what GSMCOC is going to look like in ten years.
In 1 Corinthians 5, was the problem that there was a sinner within the congregation or was it the congregation's attitude toward the sin? I believe it was the latter but am interested in your view.
I heard a fellow use the term suburbanized referring to the church in that the church is isolated from issues found in inner cities. A year or two ago Christian Chronicle reported that some of the people in churches in the Denver suburbs were criticized for forgoing services with their congregation to go to downtown Denver and meet with the homeless, prostitutes, drug addicts, homosexuals etc. I wonder how the church can relate to those people when they refuse to come into contact with them. And I wonder how the church can influence them when the church will not associate with them or welcome them into the assembly until those people give up their sinful practices. Are we sinless?
You told a story the other day about a time you and Linda thought you had encountered a church with a woman preacher but felt better when you were told it was a man with a high voice. Are you sure he/she was not transgender? Trust me, sometimes you cannot know for sure. I've been told stories by Church of Christers concerning their mistaking a Church with instruments for the real church and left when they saw the instrument. Years ago, when the Boston movement was in the news, Dottie and Shawn and I were in Boston and after searching the telephone book to avoid the Boston Church we found ourselves in an assembly where women made some announcements and prayed for the sick otherwise it was like a real church. We thought it odd but we stayed. I believe it would have been as ridiculous for us to leave as it is for people to leave when they see we have a kitchen. I believe to its detriment the church suffers from Ideological Amplification. If you don't know what I mean by that I will explain.
The reason for the question concerning the problem in the Church at Corinth is how does a homosexual hurt me if they attend the same church I attend? Their attendance does not mean I accept homosexuality. If the subject comes up I can tell them what I believe the Bible says on the subject. We have formalized the assembly to the point that we accept only people who look like us and believe like us.
Members of the Church of Christ have an attitude similar to the one Russian President Putin chastised Obama for having we believe ourselves to be exceptional. The Christian religion began on Pentecost and went through a series of mutations. The Church of Christ today is the result of a group of Presbyterians along with a Baptist or two upset with the status quo. We took first-century conveniences, personal preferences, and biases and our conveniences, personal preferences, and biases and made them law. Calling ourselves Church of Christ does not make us the church of Christ nor does saying "In Jesus Name" mean we are speaking with his approval. We are just one of many groups that believe it has an inside track on truth.
One solution to promoting evangelism might be for us to remember what Jesus said "let him who is without sin, cast the first stone" and as you have made of point of saying we are not Jesus we are all learning.
John Jenkins
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
http://alumcave.blogspot.com/
"It is, in the end, cheaper to feed the whole flock for a year than to fight them for a week."
---1850 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs
"If the tale of the poor wretches...could be impartially related, it would exhibit a picture of cruelty, injustice, and horror scarcely surpassed by that of the Peruvians in the time of Pizarro."
---1852 Gen. E. D. Townsend in his California Diary of the Indians facing pressure from the 1849 gold rush
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