Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Personal issue, opinions needed

WOW Swamp you have been seriously hurt and are very lost. You may have read the Bible but I find it hard to believe you know Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour when you say things like that.

I'm not hurt at all. I'm thankful. I find it hard to believe a Christian can attend church.

Catholics and Russian Orthodox up here have the worst reputation for illegal and illicit behavior from their clergy. I'll bet when you get down to the brass tacks you will find a kid that has been sexually abused. Too many get off with being fired or replaced instead of facing the music and going to prison.

Swampgas1 walks to the beat of a different drummer...........thankfully he is the only one following that beat !!!

A church is separate from the building it meets in.

1 Corinthians 16:19 (NIV) The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house.

Romans 16:5 (NIV) Greet also the church that meets at their house. . . .

Philemon 1:2 (NIV) to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier and to the church that meets in your home:

When I say pray about it and seek out a church that practices the love of Christ, it doesn't necessarily mean a building, but churches do meet and it's the fellowship that's important.

Maybe it could be your Christian friends that you hunt and fish with.

Good grief,....

I haven't read the thread, so apologies up front if i mispeak.

i'm an rph and a pastor.
Without any gross misconduct given, if the church does not give him a minimum of 6 month for not "fitting", the church is dead wrong. Most often, in these cases, the pastor and he do not gel, but he needs to be very financially taken care of no matter what.

allheart, sounds like the new guy got a raw deal. But like has been said earlier in this thread, there may be more to the situation than he is telling you. Or, maybe the church elders are operating under a misunderstanding. I hope it all works out.

My maternal grandfather was a methodist preacher. I grew up going to church 3 times a week till I was a teenager and had enough of a say to quit. I attended multiple churches in several states as a kid and got to know and observe a lot of really great people. Truly good people, best you could find. But I also saw a lot of lying, hypocritical, judgemental fools. I watched my father invest incredible amounts of the things he had the least of (time, money) and saw him get taken advantage of and schit all over. Lost my taste for organized religion. I take my relationship with the Lord seriously, but it is a personal relationship as I think it should be. My kids will be exposed, and at an age where they can appropriately make their own decisions I'll support them however they go.

Sorry for the sidetrack, but my point is if your new guy is as good a man as you think, I hope he's got a broad back.

Church and faith are two very different things.

Figure that out, and you will be fine.



Church is nothing more than a haven for the weak, and a tax shelter for the clever.

That's the norm.......

Thanks for this great story; I just loved the ending:

"What exactly did God say was the proper attire for worshiping here?" asked the preacher.

"Well, sir, God told me that He didn't have a clue what I should wear. He says He's never been in this church."

I suspect that God has never been in a lot of churches and may never have been in a single one; it is quite possible that God is dead against organized religion, all organized religions.

Organized religions are businesses, not unlike country-clubs and other businesses built for social contacts and networking, except less open and less fun and much more hypocritical.

I worship God in my head, talking to my family, friends and strangers and in my actions.
I do not need paid intermediates to worship God, while imposing their views of God, their thoughts and their hypocritical sermons on me.
I thoroughly distrust organized religions and the people who make their money running them.
I thoroughly hate the hypocrisy and arrogance of church professionals and of many so called "elders" although I am sure some are truly seeking to help their congregation and its individual members.

By the way, do not forget that churches and organized religion while they initially contributed to the building of America and its founding values, have taken a turn for the worse and are responsible for the present destruction of these very values.

All too true and well illustrated by this quote of the Acts.

I attended church till my late teens,and my whole family was very involved. My father was on the board of trustee's,or some such thing, my brother was music director etc. Anyway, some years after I left, one of my brothers was beginning to get involved in the ministery,doing sermons once in a while etc. It looked like he was likely to become a pastor.

In the course of about a year(from the time he began preaching the odd sermon), he began to become disillussioned with the church and ended up leaving entirely,alienating him from some of the family. We spoke about it at length,and he said that once he saw how the inner workings of the church operated,he could no longer stand in front of the people and pretend to support it.

My oldest brother had been absent from the church for some years, and then returned. He too become very involved and felt called to minister He became a youth pastor,which he really enjoyed,and the youth group flourished while he was there.
The church decided he was ready for the big time, so he started preaching on Sundays. Before too long, he too came into conflict with the head pastor of the church. He apparently didn't like what my brother was preaching, and told him he'd better toe the line. He wouldn't, since everything he preached he took directly from the bible, and things got ugly.
Eventually, he was summoned to Edmonton, from his home town of Aylmer,Ontario. I live near Edmonton,so he came to visit while he was here. He told me he had to go speak to a group of the most senior pastors( called before the Sanhedrin,was how he put it)and they would decide his fate.

He stated his case, and they didn't much like it. They decided to put him in one of the smallest churches they had,composed mostly of a few seniors with no youth to speak of. The conflict with the head pastor there was not long in coming, and within a year he called it quits.

I spoke with both my brothers at length about what went wrong, and it always comes down to politics and power. They both still attend church,although not the one we grew up in. I myself have not attended in more than a decade, nor will I likely do so again. I made a lot of great friends in that church, many of which are still friends to this day, so I guess that is one positive thing to come out of it.

I see the physical toll the stress and turmoil took on my older brother. The pressure to just toe the line and do as he was told was huge, and he paid dearly in defying them. He's told me what the major issue's were, and basically the church interpretted various scriptures differently than he did, They couldn't say he was wrong, but neither were they willing to let him state his case for his beliefs. It was basically ""This is what we teach here, so preach what we say or else". Since he was unwilling to keep quite, he was forced out. It could well be that this is what is happening in the OP's case too. Just not a good "fit".

Swampy,

I actually agree with you on most points, however I also recognize that like everything else in life people will do things there own way. If going to church is what some feel is their best way to praise and serve the Lord, then that is up to them and fine with me. I am also certain that they will find the Lord inside the walls of their building they call church, because that is where they want him to be. That is where they confide in him and while I do not believe that we need to be an active member of a church to be a good person or Christen it certainly doesn't take anything away from the people who attend.

Church has it's benefits whether you see them or not, they help spread the word of God, provide a support structures for those who need it or stray etc... However they do have their faults as well as you have pointed out, they cannot help that, they are man made after all.

A church is separate from the building it meets in.

1 Corinthians 16:19 (NIV) The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house.

Romans 16:5 (NIV) Greet also the church that meets at their house. . . .

Philemon 1:2 (NIV) to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier and to the church that meets in your home:

It�s the fellowship that counts.

Matthew 18:20 (NIV) For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.

That said, it's foolish to claim a church of believers can't meet in a building some think of as a church and that Christ's words of Matthew 18:20 fail because of the building, which is of no account in God's view.

Acts 24:14 "But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets:"

A man in a pulpit can give you his revelation, but his is only for him. You have to have your own. Don't waste your time and money on a church. Life is short do something useful and enjoyable.

I expected that remark but while you are right from an ideal point of view, you are wrong in reality.

Church is a business and the building is its headquarters, its shop, its marketing base, its work-shop, its customer manipulation center, etc.

The congregation and fellowship you speak of is only the assembly of deceived customers of a deceitful business.

Amen...

"Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Hebrews 10:5

Guys, is it not obvious that there is scripture that supports both arguments and that one doesn't trump the other?