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Symplicity of the old country church..


angels4u

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It's so sad that there are many dead men in dead churches.

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Guest Butero
3 hours ago, angels4u said:

What has happened over the years?

 

Before mega churches, light shows, smoke machines and Christian rock where ears were tickled. This is where souls were saved, hymns were sung and preachers, preached the word of God, visited the sick, and ministers knew the people in the congregation personally.

(copied from facebook)

25399111_10155862847215502_4041250580749003577_n.jpg

I will pass old abandoned church buildings like this and feel sad that they are no longer being used.  Some have gradually fallen into a state of decay where they could never be used again.  Some are still in alright shape, but they were simply closed down for lack of interest.  Others have been turned into bank buildings, storage facilities, and other things.  What a shame!  

We had an old building similar to this not far from where I live that was eventually torn down.  I hated to see it go.  No electricity or running water, but it served it's purpose.  Do you know where this old church building is located?

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Look on the bright side.  Some of these very tiny churches are  no longer being used because the congregants actually were able to build larger facilities that had air conditioners and bathrooms and heat and electricity.

I do think small, abandoned church buildings like this should be preserved for historic purposes or if used for something else, don't change anything about it.

And to be frank and honest, some of these small churches were dead and cold.  The size of the building isn't what makes the church, the people, on fire for God.

 

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16 minutes ago, Butero said:

I will pass old abandoned church buildings like this and feel sad that they are no longer being used.  Some have gradually fallen into a state of decay where they could never be used again.  Some are still in alright shape, but they were simply closed down for lack of interest.  Others have been turned into bank buildings, storage facilities, and other things.  What a shame!  

We had an old building similar to this not far from where I live that was eventually torn down.  I hated to see it go.  No electricity or running water, but it served it's purpose.  Do you know where this old church building is located?

Butero,I don't know where this church is, but I do know that a little church like this is where I really grew in the Lord,it had solid preaching sermons,no worldly stuff and everything was dealt with in the right way by the elders of the church, we don't need big modern ,we shouldn't have to attract people to come to the church because of how good it looks or because of the music,too may preachers these days want to become polulair by preaching a feel good sermon :(

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Guest Butero
2 minutes ago, angels4u said:

Butero,I don't know where this church is, but I do know that a little church like this is where I really grew in the Lord,it had solid preaching sermons,no worldly stuff and everything was dealt with in the right way by the elders of the church, we don't need big modern ,we shouldn't have to attract people to come to the church because of how good it looks or because of the music,too may preachers these days want to become polulair by preaching a feel good sermon :(

A-men and A-men!  I see these little old country church buildings and wish someone that lived in that area would catch a vision for it and open it back up again.  I can imagine when those little churches were first built, and the meetings that must have taken place, and the souls that were saved.  Thanks for posting it.  I would go to a church like that.  

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I love the Country Church.  The majority of Churches I have attended, the Congregation numbered between 20 and 60.  I got to know some good, loving, God fearing Saints in those Churches, but I also know (like was said earlier) some of them, (a few of them?) were Spiritually dead.

 

Still, I could never attend a Mega Church.......not knocking those who do, it just isn't for me......

 

This is one I love to see.  Would love to go there.  :)church.jpg

 

 

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18 hours ago, Butero said:

A-men and A-men!  I see these little old country church buildings and wish someone that lived in that area would catch a vision for it and open it back up again.  I can imagine when those little churches were first built, and the meetings that must have taken place, and the souls that were saved.  Thanks for posting it.  I would go to a church like that.  

The little church where we used to go was build by a pastor  who immigrated from Denmark to Canada, he planted churches ,people actually still go there :)

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23 hours ago, angels4u said:

What has happened over the years?

People are worshiping themselves rather than God.

"And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold." - Matthew 24:12

 

"But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:
    For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud,
        blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving,
            slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong,
                haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.
                    And from such people turn away!" - 2 Timothy 3:1-5

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My experience with these small churches: They are quaint, yes. Everybody knows everybody, yes. But...

When I moved from my home of 46 years, Seattle, to rural, central KY, my wife and I marveled at the sheer quantity of small churches. I took pictures of road turnoffs that would have signs for three or four different churches. Then I got to meet a few of these folks and started attending the one by our farm. I also attended the one where the guy I bought my farm from had become the pastor just a few months before. His was one of the larger ones with about a hundred members. 

The first crack in the charm came from something he said to me: Many of the elderly members of that church had been attending regularly their whole life, yet could not tell you the difference between the old and new testaments! He said he was going to fix that by engaging in a broader set of subject matter in his sermons in order to increase education of the members regarding the message of Christ. He was fired after  a few weeks of this.

Then I joined a local Southern Gospel band which toured a lot of the local churches within about a 75 mile radius. I spent a LOT of Saturdays and Sundays at churches and ate a LOT of pot luck. This was also the turning point for me regarding the small churches. I have no real love for them any more. The members, yes. In fact my love for the members is what, after about two years in the band, led me to quit the band. It was a mutual decision (we're still friends).

Here is the high level details that led to this:

In most of these churches, the preacher would mainly entertain by yelling and screaming and scaring everyone about hell. And a great deal of this was irrelevant and boring stories from their distant path that, truth be told, the congregation already knew. There was zero teaching and about thirty seconds of actual, useful information in a 20-30 minute sermon. I then discovered a couple of reasons for this: The pastors were typically paid about $30-$50 a month and had no real training AT ALL. They were not just lay people, but when I started bringing up certain ideas and scriptures, they couldn't even speak to them. They only knew the handful of scriptures that, as I put it, "they learned when they, themselves were in Vacation Bible School (VBS) as children. And they were taught by VBS teachers who got their information the same way." i.e. passing down ignorance from generation to generation. 

And when someone DID try to discuss anything outside their very, VERY narrow viewpoint, they didn't just try to shut you down. Often they got really mad, completely out of the blue. 

These revelations were solidified in me as I got to the point where I'd been to many of these churches on multiple occasions. i.e. my first impression was not an outlier.

My synopsis of many (but not all) of these small country churches is as follows. These are not a list of complaints or compliments. Just observations:

1. Everybody knows everybody, and through multiple generations going back a long while.

2. The pastor is a layman that would be chewed up and spit out in ANY debate on a forum like this one. That is, even if his doctrine is sound, he could not support it. It's simply what he believes. 

3. It is very, VERY common for a sermon to be about how "evil and lost" the people outside this particular gathering are. 

4. The screaming and yelling is very entertaining for many of these people. There is often a lot of "AMEN, BROTHER!", and "PREACH IT, BROTHER" from a select group of males that will kind of sit together toward the front. It was sad to hear them say "Amen Brother" right after he made reference to particular wicked attributes about Satan. It's like they didn't even hear what he was saying.

5. It's pretty much always about hellfire or at least touches on it. And Satan. 

6. None of the congregations look like they are really experiencing any joy. There are exceptions, but it is almost as if they live in six days of pure hell and go to church to be told how miserable and awful they are and then they get confirmation that they are the "good guys that are saved" because they are in church, not like all those bad people out there that are bringing in a load of hay on Sunday. 

7. They have heard the message they are hearing a thousand times. 

8. There are pillows and small blankets all over the pews because everybody has their place they sit and it is sort of a home away from home.

9. They are not the least bit interested in hearing anything that even suggests that something they believe may be incorrect. 

10. I believe there are a lot of saved people in these churches, but also a lot of wolves in sheep's clothing. They really do fall under "blessed are the meek", though I've discovered that if you even LOOK like you might want to try to gore their ox, the meekness fades pretty quickly. 

What finished it for me was when I just couldn't take any more of the "turn or burn" and "where will you go when YOU die" yelling based on little or NO scripture, before I sang one of my songs, trying to keep it at a high level, I said in the mic: "Folks. John 3:16 says that you perish or receive eternal life. Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus. It is so simple. You accept Jesus and you live, even after this earthly tent of the human body dies. If you don't accept Jesus and not only the tent you occupy, but YOU die. Eternity is not about geography. It is about condition."

They then, a day later, had the audacity to tell me that a visitor had been confused by my words because they contradicted what the pastor said. My response was, "Good. Did they use scripture to teach her?" Their response was that we are there to sing, and not preach (even though other long time members did plenty of "teaching" between songs, sometimes going on and on for ten minutes or more). 

But I got the point. And I told the leader that I was no longer going to sit by idle and listen to nonsense being preached by "leaders" that had no real clue what they were talking about and were presenting a childs version of Christianity to full grown adults (think "spiritual milk"). So I said it would only get a lot "worse" if I stayed in the band and it was best that I leave. Again, we are still friends.

I'm not really a fan of mega-churches, but rather I go by what is being taught. Some seem pretty solid and some are more like motivational teachers that entertain and throw in a bit of scripture to make it seem like a Christian gathering. Think Joel Osteen. And I believe that the desire to be entertained is universal. In the small churches in rural KY, fifty people at a time, and in the mega-churches, with 10,000 people at a time. But there are good, solid churches in both groups. You just have to find them.

 

One interesting note:

The rest of my band actually attended a couple of these churches and I had an oddly comical experience. Almost all of them are "baptist" of one separateness or another. But one time a "Christian" (Offshoot of Church of Christ) church asked us to come. The sermon was surprisingly good and had a solid and useful biblical message. It was akin to the kind of stuff I heard in Seattle. Afterward, one of the band members said something that caused me to force myself not to laugh: "That sermon was weird. It was like he was just talking to you." I said, "Yes, This is the kind of sermon I'm used to. Plain teaching that motivates me to study and reflect."

Edited by Still Alive
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