This particular post is short and simple. Quite frankly, it's easy to go back to an institutional church. It is especially easy if it is a place you feel comfortable and have friends. The easiness comes from being able to arrive at the building, sit in a Sunday School seat, sit in a pew, and then go home for lunch. Since the pastors do almost everything, you can just sit and relax. After a long week of work and (some) play, you simply want to sit still. The institution happily lets you.
Simple church life, while more rewarding, is also more difficult. It requires activity. It requires investment. It requires action.
Please, I exhort you not to allow the lure of easiness draw you back to institutional Christianity. I guarantee that you will despise it after a few weeks. Put forth the effort to be the church we read about in the New Testament (well, the good aspects). An active body is a vibrant one.
It's worth the hard work.
2 comments:
All I can say is what I said before, "How could I go back after I know what I now know". Again, my research and understanding won't let me.
Yes Eric, that is what the institutional church is all about.
Dancing girls at the front and great entertainment to keep the pew sitters happy so that they don't want to leave the church.
Well, especially the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.
In one institutional church, the pastor suggested that he would like to build a drive in church so that the congregation could drive in and would not need to get out of their cars, perhaps like in a drive in cinema style.
Imagine, that would be perfect for an institutional church. It would be just like going to the movie :-)
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