Looking for a church

[LadyRaven]

I am asking for some advice from any of the seasoned Christians on this forum. Trying to find a new church is very tough indeed for me. I have researched hours on end church web sites and attended numerous churches but am so tired of going to churches just to find out how they work and then end up not liking the worship style or something or other. I'm also tired of looking up churches on the internet to find dead ends.

I consider myself a New Testament Christian. I am a former Mormon and have attended a moderate denominational Christian church for a few years but it is now going to the megasize "Crystal Cathedral" ranks and now I am looking for something smaller, maybe less flashy, and less interested in moolah. I never really cared for their services all that much but it was something and better than nothing I thought.

I feel the following are important: 1) Weekly observance of the Lord's Supper. The church I had been attending did it whenever they felt like and I disliked that. I want to be able to fellowship with others and remember the Lord's sacrifice each week via the Supper. 2) I am a very conservative individual and issues such as abortion and homosexuality acceptance in a church is important to me. I would avoid such a church. 3) I do not believe that women should be ordained as pators in a church.

The Disciples of Christ have the weekly Supper but they are too liberal for me. The Reformed Church can have weekly Supper but may not at many churches and the leadership base seems fairly liberal. The Lutheran Mo-Synod comes fairly close to what I think is important but I do not believe that one must be a member of the church on order to partake of the Supper. They will not offer it to those not a member of their church. They also make a big deal about other churches being in full fellowship with them. My wife is sort of turned off by the robes and confession thing in the Mo-Synod, too. I have never been to a Catholic Church but I already do not believe in the priesthood vows, confessionals, absolving, or the office of a Pope as God's representative here.

Does anyone have any suggestions to help guide my search? I do not think that I am hypercritical of a church. I can take a number of things that might seem somewhat odd to me. I visited a PCA church once that had members, in the middle of the service, start going over to others and praying with them right in the middle of the service or Sunday School lesson. That was sort of distracting and odd for me.

grapeseed

Within each of the more liturgical branches of churches there are liberal and orthodox branches. There are several branches of the Reformed church, for example which are still conservative, as well as Presbyterian (Orthodox Presbyterian and ARP and PCA...most PCA don't usually violate the rule of order in order to pray as small groups in the service, so try another branch of the PCA. That is very odd for PCA, actually. I have been PCA for yrs, though right now I am ARP and have been OPC also. Evangelical Pres is a mixed bag, some are conservative some are not,this is one of those denominations in flux which could go either way) There are also conservative Methodists (I think one group is called Weslyan Methodists). Call the churches and ask questions before you go.

Of course you will not find a church which is perfect. You have to ask what things would be nice but can be overlooked and what things are worth separating over. For example, the LCMS...is requiring membership in their church or another confessional church worth separating over? Is the use of robes worth not fellowshipping over?

If you are willing to have a little more casualness...(is that a word?) in worship (like moving around to pray in groups) look toward the anabaptist tradition, most of them are very conservative.

[LadyRaven]

Lawyer, what's heretic about Copeland, Hagin, and Hinn?

Word of faith doctrine is heresy. Copeland does teach it. I know also there was some problems with Hinn and the trinity yrs ago. He repented publically, but was accused of preaching his error again. He repented again. I haven't heard anything from him since cause well...I don't want to waste my time with someone who has so much trouble with a pivotal doctrine of scripture. Hagin? I dunno. I don't listen to him.

[billie]

What's word of faith doctrine?

[LadyRaven]

What's word of faith doctrine?

You had to ask that didn't you

Here are some decent links (I have tried to find links which are informative, not venomous)

Wikipedia (yes I know it's not the ultimate authority, but this particular entry seems to be spot on) The only thing that I will say is that...not all word of faith teachers teach all of the things listed there...some just have one part some have all of it, it's not something like a confession you sign.

CRI

The "name it claim it" stuff is not the worst of the problem, if it were, I wouldn't be upset about it too much. Because well...a. It's an exaggeration and misapplication of real doctrine and b. most people don't completely believe it even when they say they do.

The problem has to do with their belief about the nature of Christ. that is what is heresy, when you change the nature of God, you end up with heresy by default.

Kenneth Copeland says, "And the whole New Testament calls Him the first-born....The word "born" began to ring in my spirit; it just began to roll around: born, born. I never had let Him go through that in my own thinking....And while I was laying there thinking about these things, the Spirit of God spoke to me. And He said, "Son, realize this: Now follow Me in this, don't let your tradition trip you up." He said, "Think this way: A twice-born man whipped Satan in his own domain." And I threw my Bible down. I said, "What?" He said, "A born-again man defeated Satan. The first-born of many brethren defeated him." He said, "You are the very image and the very copy of that one." I said, "Goodness gracious, sakes alive!" And I began to see what had gone on in there, and I said, "You don't mean--you couldn't dare mean, that I could have done the same thing?" He said, "Oh, yeah, if you'd had the knowledge of the Word of God that He did, you could have done the same thing, 'cause you're a reborn man, too."Kenneth Copeland, "What Happened from the Cross to the Throne" tape # 02-0017

[LadyRaven]

What's word of faith doctrine?

You had to ask that didn't you

Here are some decent links (I have tried to find links which are informative, not venomous)

Wikipedia (yes I know it's not the ultimate authority, but this particular entry seems to be spot on) The only thing that I will say is that...not all word of faith teachers teach all of the things listed there...some just have one part some have all of it, it's not something like a confession you sign.

CRI

The "name it claim it" stuff is not the worst of the problem, if it were, I wouldn't be upset about it too much. Because well...a. It's an exaggeration and misapplication of real doctrine and b. most people don't completely believe it even when they say they do.

The problem has to do with their belief about the nature of Christ. that is what is heresy, when you change the nature of God, you end up with heresy by default.

Kenneth Copeland says, "And the whole New Testament calls Him the first-born....The word "born" began to ring in my spirit; it just began to roll around: born, born. I never had let Him go through that in my own thinking....And while I was laying there thinking about these things, the Spirit of God spoke to me. And He said, "Son, realize this: Now follow Me in this, don't let your tradition trip you up." He said, "Think this way: A twice-born man whipped Satan in his own domain." And I threw my Bible down. I said, "What?" He said, "A born-again man defeated Satan. The first-born of many brethren defeated him." He said, "You are the very image and the very copy of that one." I said, "Goodness gracious, sakes alive!" And I began to see what had gone on in there, and I said, "You don't mean--you couldn't dare mean, that I could have done the same thing?" He said, "Oh, yeah, if you'd had the knowledge of the Word of God that He did, you could have done the same thing, 'cause you're a reborn man, too."Kenneth Copeland, "What Happened from the Cross to the Throne" tape # 02-0017

Just so I don't get slammed for being biased without letting them defend themselves, here are two links which do

Victory

More

Basically, Word of Faith is Gnosticism in Christian trappings and it's very sad because most people have no idea what the people really believe. Honestly I used to listen to several of the teachers listed on the webpages and never heard WOF come from them and have been blessed by them on occasion. However, the doctrine is heresy, whether the people accused teach it or not.

[KeilanS]

Keilan, have you tried to pm him?

I figure it's not worth starting an argument, although I might have to if I see more posts like the ones I've seen so far. Except most of this has been explained in this topic anyway by now.

[LadyRaven]

Hinn has cursed everyone who does not agree with his ministry. I have it on video... not only did he curse people who do not agree with him, but it did it in a demonic voice that was not his own.

Like I said, I haven't listened to him in years. When he said there were nine people inthe trinity, I was like, eh what? About a month later he repented. When this happened again I gave up. At the time I liked him cause at the time he was very bouyant and excited about things and not one of those screaming preachers. Heavenn only knows what he has said siince I quit listening. The quote I gave from copeland though, I did hear, that's why out of all the quotes attributed to him by heretic watchers I used it. Cause I know it's accurate without looking any further.

[grapeseed]

LawyerForGod,

My apologies for being out of the forum for quite some time. I've been away and now have recently moved. I am living in Central Indiana. Feel free to pass along any recommendations.

grapeseed

The Missouri-Synod and Wisconsin-Synod Lutheran churches are incorrect in their practices of how they treat women. Some of them also deny the activity of the Holy Spirit in his gifts and functions... (I am not AG).

Lutheran is good yes. You will find some ELCA good, others liberal. It depends on the pastor and congregation. Martin Luther stood on the word of God. "The just shall live by faith". Plus they have great music. Bach, Beethoven (sp) cool stuff.

At least this denomination is not a flake like so many non-denom or things like Vineyard and Assembly of God which have gone way off into cultic behavior and beliefs and practices since the middle 1990s.

Nothing with Copeland, Hagin, or Hinn in their teaching. No word of faith churches. These are all heresy.

If I knew the state you lived in, I could possibly give an exact recommendation.

Baptist are once saved always saved for the most part... not biblical either.

Catholic... no way.

Methodist... depends on the pastor. John Wesley who started the denomination was good.

I could go on.

Edited September 15, 2006 by grapeseed

[Candi770]

This is an awesome article I found>

Looking for the right church in the wrong places

[grapeseed]

I certainly believe that there is something about home church here. I don't believe that going to a dead church, in hope of finding some other Zadok seekers, is what we ought to do. If a church is dead get out and find some living water.

Of course there is no church that is perfect. Perfection does not come by the hands of people leading anything. I will give an example here of a church I attended. It was a Church of God-Anderson Indiana church. When I started going there it seemed too large for me but since we were tired of looking we decided to stay. We did enjoy the Sunday School and worship services after a bit. It was not what we were exactly used to, there was a lot of standing and a lot of "broadway" sort of things going on.

After a while, this church brought in a new Pastor. He was younger but had been around. He fired the Youth Pastor and shook everything else up. I think his goal was to get gigantic and each week I felt I was watching some actor up on the stage. He put on quite a show, really. Then, the unveiling of the "crystal cathedral" concept came into play. All of a sudden we were in the throws of a building plan to make this gigantic architectural wonder and grow to an ever greater size.

What happened was that the church started to get larger. We had more people coming and we had to open up a third Sunday service and they started doing a Saturday night service. However, what I saw coming into the Sunday School started making my stomach turn. People were coming in who thought homosexuality was no big thing really, and everyone wanted their own sort of ministry.

The Pastor then became a sort of air traffic controller guiding the ministries that others wanted to do. If a guy came in who "felt" a call to go minister to some tribe in South America then the Pastor worked with him on that. When another came in who wanted to minister to musicians downtown then he worked on that. So, I felt he let a lot of things go in trying to lead these fairly dynamic people to their ministries. All the while these things took money...lots of it. Fund raising became the main thing. We left.

We attended a Baptist church for a while but the preaching there was a bit much for us. Once you are saved that's it. You can't lose it...and the fire and brimstone preaching was an ear ringer. We just did not synch up with the doctrine. We attended a Presbyterian church for a while and we just got tired of hearing about John Calvin. We were more interesed in hearing what the scriptures had to say rather than what John Calvin said they say. This Pastor would mention Calvin in every other breath and I actually heard visitors attend that said this church didn't really teach Calvinistically. Wow!

We have attended a few other churches since Calvin's church and Church of God. Holy Hannah, do churches ever get tired of singing "Open the eyes of my heart Lord", "Bow Down", "You are Holy", "Here I am to Worship", and "Shout to the Lord"? Incredible the boringness of church worship music. There are so many wonderful worship hymns to sing other than a group of 10 popular church praise songs from the radio. (Once in a while I listen to a Christian radio station here. In the space of three hours I heard three different artists sing the same "Open the eyes of my heart Lord". I think Christians just have these songs in memory like a rosary prayer.

Sure, no church is perfect. Home church sounds good at this point and basically it's what we have been doing. We'll likely continue onward and have been thinking about starting a Bible group up in our home. Just the Bible...taking turns expounding the scriptures.

This is an awesome article I found>

Looking for the right church in the wrong places

Edited September 16, 2006 by grapeseed