Because I’ve moved over twenty times in my adult life, I’ve visited churches that were cliquish and unfriendly. I’ve seen pastors act arrogantly and watched elder boards make selfish decisions.
I have a personal friend whose father was an elder in their church, and it was later discovered that he was a child molester.
Another friend was slandered by his pastor while unselfishly doing volunteer work for the church.
Several of my friends were raised in legalistic Christian homes.
But I'm still a believer and so are these personal friends. In fact, we're all part of local churches, active and confident in our faith.
In contrast, there’s a large movement of "Christians" leaving the church and rejecting evangelical Christianity based largely on bad church experiences.(1)
Why this difference?
Because my friends and I haven't put our faith in people or churches. We've put our faith in Jesus who never, never, never lets us down! We know there are disappointing examples in the church, but we know that things outside the church are worse (1 John 5:19).(2)
Bad church examples are part of this fallen world we live in. But “every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith.” 1 John 5:4
On what are you building your faith?
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(1) When I use the term evangelical, I mean Bible-believing, which is its original meaning. I am not using it as a political term. To read about this great movement of Christians leaving the church see Wilderness Wanderers.
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