Angelina said:
Great read!... ^_^
Dear Church, Here’s Why People Are REALLY Leaving You
By John Pavlovitz ~
Church Leaders
You think it’s because “the culture” is so lost, so perverse, so beyond help that they are all walking away.
You believe that they’ve turned a deaf ear to the voice of God; chasing money, and sex, and material things.
You think that the gays and the Muslims and the Atheists and the pop stars have so screwed up the morality of the world that everyone is abandoning faith in droves.
But those aren’t the reasons people are leaving you.
http://www.churchleaders.com/outreach-missions/outreach-missions-articles/244545-dear-church-heres-people-really-leaving.html
I'm new to this forum and when I read this I had to sign up. Thanks for posting this. I totally agree with this article.
We can be entertained anywhere. Until you can give us something more than a Christian-themed performance piece; something that allows us space and breath and conversation and relationship, many of us are going to sleep in and stay away.
The church is a lonely place. I drive to a church building, hear a sermon, people then rush out to just get in their cars and go home. I'd rather I'd stayed home and listened to sermons online. You don't know how lonely you really are until so many "loving" people don't care about you. If I'm open to love them but they won't love back I don't know what to do. It compounds the lonliness. Yet, the show must go on.
Anywhere else you'd expect the indifference. It's like a husband or wife who doesn't care to communicate. The silence is deafening you might say. I wish church was like in the book of Acts. I think the people not just the pastors are coldly hiding their lives from one another and the entertainment is hiding who the actors truly are.
Mat_24:12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.
In fact, most of your time, money and energy seems to be about luring people to where you are, instead of reaching people where they already are.
You don't know how poor you really are until you see how much money other people have. I don't understand how many churches can have so much money given to them and be so self engrandized. I see so many people in this life really struggling to get by. Many churches today exists for themselves, not the people. They live above the people with their fancy buildings, expensive travel arrangements and newer vehicles.
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, many of us survive living hand to mouth even though we work hard. I just don't like how these churches flaunt their wealth in ways that prove they don't care to help others as much as they like their sound systems and large capacity buildings. Their budgets are spent on rather immodest materialism instead of caring for people. They should receive the blessing to give the blessing by helping people pay medical bills or other really helpful ways, not in self growth and luxury.
I know of foreign missionaries who are very poor, serving Jesus, while million dollar church buildings are being built across the street from other million dollar church buildings. Paul would be ashamed of the modern church for this.
We see a Jesus in the Bible who hung out with low-lifes and prostitutes and outcasts, and loved them right there, but that doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea.
You don't know how broken you really are until so many happy people don't relate to you. Especially when you don't qualify to meet the established social norms like being a part of one of those perfect and well dressed family units. I guess I'm a social outcast as I come with a hard life of problems and baggage that many can't relate to. I don't have a family and can't afford to dress to impress. I feel so broken. Most people have grown up unscathed by evil and seemingly can't relate to suffering.
I think the problem is that the church has become so ordered that they forgot how to help the disordered. It would be like putting a nice house in a ghetto. People begin to resent what it represents. Although there is nothing wrong with owning a nice house. The inequality of money becomes remarkeable when the house was intended to help others but does not. Everybody expects the church to be showing God's love on earth. The gospel get's tarnished and this is why Paul did not personally receive money but worked with his own hands. I love him for that. He cared about the gospel and the people to not put anything before them as a stumbling block.
The gospel is of God's love for us but what about man's love for us? It all just makes me want to just stay home and wait until He calls me out of this place. I hope Jesus will save me from this life. His love was proven on that cross. He gave all He had for us.
1Jn_3:16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
