OneLight Posted September 19, 2019 Group: Royal Member Followers: 22 Topic Count: 1,294 Topics Per Day: 0.21 Content Count: 31,762 Content Per Day: 5.23 Reputation: 9,762 Days Won: 115 Joined: 09/14/2007 Status: Offline Share Posted September 19, 2019 29 minutes ago, Sonshine☀️ said: I believe churches are failing the youth (and people of all ages) because they are not teaching the Bible chapter by chapter, verse by verse. Many churches today are much more interested in entertaining the congregation rather than they are feeding the sheep. It’s a dire situation for sure. Let your light shine! Isn't that what the bible studies are for? Around where I live, they do teach it verse by verse during the week. Preachers give more of a message the Lord has place on their heart that the body of believers need to hear. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GandalfTheWise Posted September 19, 2019 Group: Royal Member Followers: 24 Topic Count: 40 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 1,459 Content Per Day: 0.60 Reputation: 2,377 Days Won: 2 Joined: 08/23/2017 Status: Offline Share Posted September 19, 2019 Much of the complaining I read about individual ministries and congregations is about judging by appearances and preferences. The music's too loud or too boring or too whatever. The worship is either too frozen or too wild. The preaching and teaching is not to my taste; it's either irrelevant to my life or doesn't dig deep enough. There are either too many new believers who are not maturing fast enough or seekers making them look bad or there are not enough new believers showing they don't preach the gospel enough. They are either too involved with social causes or too aloof or unconcerned to help those in physical need. They either have too much sin (showing they aren't preaching the real gospel) or they're too legalistic with too many rules. The congregation doesn't have enough kids because they've failed to reach the next generation, or they have too many kids being a distraction, or they've segregated the kids away from the adults too much to not be a distraction. They don't hold the correct doctrinal beliefs on non-essentials. They are too large which means that they are compromising the gospel for numbers or they are too small which means they are too legalistic and spiritually dead to grow. Threads like this seem to bring out a number of pet peeves and one size fits all solutions. If only congregations or ministries would do X, Y or Z, then they'd really be preaching the gospel and living the Christian life and would start growing (or start shrinking to a God-pleasing holy remnant). Many Christians inadvertently idolize particular aspects of Christian practice such as how worship is done, how the Bible is taught, how the gospel should be shared, what particular ministries should be active in a congregation, what standards for behavior or dress a ministry or congregations should have, or what doctrinal beliefs are essential and which are not. Over my life, there've been about two dozen different congregations and ministries (covering about 15 to 20 denominations) I've been involved with for periods of months or longer that I've gotten to see up close. I've seen thriving ministries, struggling ministries, and dying ministries for myself firsthand. At this point in my life, here are the three things I tend to judge a ministry by. First, is there a core of solid mature praying believers that are the real heart of the ministry? Second, is there solid spiritual growth occurring in many of the people associated with and being reached out to by the ministry? Third, do they really tangibly love each other? In my opinion, everything else is secondary to these three things. These three things always seem to be present when God's Spirit is present and active in a ministry. 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isaiah90 Posted September 19, 2019 Group: Members Followers: 1 Topic Count: 9 Topics Per Day: 0.01 Content Count: 32 Content Per Day: 0.02 Reputation: 16 Days Won: 0 Joined: 09/16/2019 Status: Offline Author Share Posted September 19, 2019 5 hours ago, Justin Adams said: We stripped the supernatural from our teachings which largely stem from early theological Platonic thought such as espoused by Augustine. So the kids yawn... ho hum. Kids WANT supernatural stuff. Look at their 'super hero' and UFO interest and all the holly-weird alien stuff. I just had to sit thru a study of Luke and Yeshua's transfiguration. No mention of WHERE He was and the Mt. Hermon things in Gen 6. No mention of how He poked the fallen deities in the eye sealing His death within a week. No mention of 'the gates of hell' and the fact they cannot withstand the church... just passive same old blah-blah. 'Had they but known, they never would have killed the King of Glory'. Explain that to the kids and see their eyes light up. Show them Psalm 82 and Deut 32 and the Babel things - the real things. They WILL sit up and take notice. Talk about Ezekiel's wars and how they might relate to REAL events... When i was a teen, i was very interested in the supernatural and the Bible. I wanted to know about Jesus' transfiguration, the sons of God, the tower of Babel, prophecy, list goes on. When i went to church, i hardly got any of my questions answered. Unfortunately, i found out that most Christians don't even read their Bibles let alone study it. They don't even know what prophecy is. I dislike how modern Christians try to overspiritualize the Bible and take out the supernatural elements of it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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