Change The "Default" Setting

[rockclimber]

This came from a commentary that i read. Your thoughts please.
For how many decades, maybe a century, has the church in America been selling the same religious stew? I hope you can feel my compassion for the situation as well as my passion for the Kingdom of God. We've been building multi-million dollar churches, mega church complexes, establishing international TV ministries, Conferences & Crusades every week somewhere, CD's, Video's, and all that is happening is that the religious culture is being changed to be more like the secular culture. The Christian divorce rate is 1% higher than the non-Christian divorce rate. When do we wake up?


Why do we need bowling alleys, food courts, basketball courts, work out centers, and "skate board ministers" as part of the church culture? Why not go to THEM rather than trying to lure them in to US?

The problems with the world are not blind imperialism, wasteful consumerism, immorality, abortion, environmental crises, or even global warming. Those are all symptoms of something deeper. The lack of leaven (spiritual) is the problem. Doing more things like the world, competing with the world "at their game" is a lose-lose strategy!

The religious horse is dead! 

Don't be fooled by size of church buildings or budgets that run many tens of millions of dollars (and more) a year. Remember this advice by Albert Einstein, "You cannot solve any problem in the same state of consciousness in which it was created." Bingo!

As Arjuna Ardagh put it, "Pigs grunt. Dogs bark. Penguins waddle. What do humans being do? What have we come to accept as the DEFAULT state of being of a human being"? Ever thought of that question?

What the church is missing in the connectivity to the Christ!

Spirituality- not religiosity!

Oneness- not separation!

Consciousness- not dogma and doctrines!

WE- not ME!

Instead it's just one more rule, one more teaching, one more book, another $1,000 offering, a program commitment to church service, and on and on as though there was something MISSING! And there is the key. There is really nothing MISSING, just the non-acknowledgment of what we have! Another house, a new dress, a better car, more sex, another sexual partner, or whatever you think you LACK isn't going to cure you!

From TV commercials to political entitlement programs we've been brain-washed into thinking we LACK and NEED MORE of anything- everything! What we really need is to change the default system on our mental-spiritual-emotional meter and realize we already have MORE than we're using. Follow this brief logic.

We have God.

God is infinite.

There isn't an infinite + something else.

[SeekerSA]

 :goodone: :iagree: :goodpost: :Urock: :rocker :happyclap: :happyclap: :2thumbs: :2thumbs:

[arcticmonster2003]

Christians are not to be friends with the world. The enemy works in many different ways, one of them is to make the church and the world come together in agreement, now so much that many churches now represent the world and its values, putting what the world wants above that which God wants. One of the greatest deceptions of the 20th and 21st century is the concept of having high self-esteem (literally, to think highly of yourself), this is not from God, who would rather you humble yourself, but of the world - this is one of the many great deceptions that has found common place in many churches, but their are many more. A church should make a clear division between the world and its concerns and God, and his concerns, and teach that it is Gods concerns that are our concerns, if it does not, I recommend that a person find a different church.

Churches are Good, they are bodies of Christ,  but not all pastors are servants of God.

[hopeful]

The religious horse is dead! 
*****************************

What the church is missing in the connectivity to the Christ!

Amen, Rockclimber!   :dsunny:

With out that connection, all you can possibly have is another weak religion!

Let's shine for the world and they'll gravitate toward that light!

Let's be the answer!   :HeartThrob:

[dboutwell]

Great thread...sooo true!

Change our hearts oh God!

Debbie

[fire walker]

Rockclimber,

Yes and there are getting to be more and more churches getting mixed up with politics too, this, as you have said, is that the churches have become just another institutional secular organization  with some religious saying or name above their church, many church leaders in general save for a few exceptions in some small forgotten churches have become this way through greed and lust for money, power and authority as if their life in this world was going to be forever, when the number of all the days of their years have came to a close they may realize they had left the truth to believe a lie, traded the prize rather than contending for it, for a short period of temporal comfort and recognition by this world, the default is deffinately due to be changed for once and for all, just as Jesus Christ died once for ALL, religion must give up continuing to offer up another sacrifice, it is finished! Religion is as far from faith as East is from West.

Peace,
Fire Walker