Church vs. Fellowship
First, I will start off by saying that I believe that there is a difference between church and fellowship. Church being the body of Christ and fellowhip being the gathering of believers together for edification. I have not been a member of any particular ministry or "church" for about three years now (I will use the term church to refer to weekly fellowship). I came to christ as a teenager and fell deeply in love with Him. Through college I sought after him sincerely. My only desire was to know Him better and do His will. I began studying the word and attending church every chance I could get. I couldn't get enough of the Word. I cut out as many secular influences as possible such as television and music so that I could hear God's voice clearly. I was amazed by how much I had grown and how clearly I was hearing from the Lord. I loved worshipping him and felt honored to be called His child. I started a bible study in my dorm so that I could fellowship with other Christian students and share what I'd learned. I couldn't wait to get back home to my home church to become an active participant and servant and share with my Pastor all that I'd learned. When I did graduate and returned home I found that church wasn't the same. By this time, I'd studies the entire New Testatment and most of the Old and the Pastor's weekly messages weren't the same. I felt I'd heard every message before. I didn't let this frustrate me however. I figured that my Pastor was preaching to those the Apostle Paul calls "babes" in Christ. I could serve and fellowship with believers like myself. Except this wasn't the case. It seemed to me everyone was a "babe" even those who'd been in the church much longer than I. The Pastor's daughter and son in law, who were also the assistant pastors, were the biggest gossips in the church and I began to see that almost every message that was taugh revolved around financial prosperity. I'd even overheard a visitor ask a minister for prayer. She was sick and dealing with depression. The church minister prayed a prayer of financial prosperity over her. He had no clue how to pray for her healing. His prayer was based from Deut. 28. I was shocked! Another minister stepped in and began to pray for the woman. After this, I stopped attending the church regularly and began to look for another church. I even became discontent with the messages I was seeing on TBN because many of them were beginning to focus on financial prosperity. I was seeing Pastors get rich and buying expensive houses and cars and reading in the book of Acts how when the church was first formed everyone sold all their belongings and gave to anyone as they had need. I felt like I was recieving mixed messages. One from church and another from the Word. I have since moved to another state and visited many churches but have not found one in which I feel connected to. I have read other posts suggesting starting an in-home fellowship and think this is a good idea.
|
|
Author: heart4god
Location: Baltimore Maryland USA
Gender: Female
Age: 27
Blog Entries: 1 (archive)
Blog Comments: 0
...... |
|
Log Into Chatroom 
