A Call to Action

Overview

Many people have come to the conclusion that the institutional church is irrelevant and does not reflect the Christianity of Christ. Tired of the mad dash to offer programs and bored of the "feel good" sermons, they have started attending home churches or have dropped out of church altogether.

I am sympathetic to these feelings.

In this article I discuss what we can do to "fix" the church.

Featured article: The Protestant Reformation

Related article: Literal Interpretation

One Apostolic Church | North Forest Home | Top of page

Culture ...

I am not so arrogant as to think I know more about how to run a church than anyone else or that a Church I ran would not have any imperfections. For me it is a matter of culture. I don't like the modern church because I don't like modern culture. I don't want to be entertained at Church nor from the pulpit.

For me a truly Christian culture would consist of quiet, peaceful people with kind words. People would prayerfully share their joys and struggles and continuously discuss spiritual topics. There would be no TV, no obsession with sports and fashion, no mad dash to purchase the proper products for holidays. But can I expect others to have the same ideals as me especially since I myself fall short?

I doubt I would have liked the culture of the apostolic church either.

So I can either drop out or compromise my ideals. Certainly some ideals simply cannot be compromised. Yet Christ admonishes us to unite in fellowship with one another — I believe this means we are to be joined to a Christian community, a Christian group, a Christian Church. The real question is, which one? My answer is to find a Church with these characteristics (or start one) . . .

• Truly Christian
• Leads us closer to Christ
• Inspires us to excel in the virtues.
• For more please read "How to Select a Church".

One Apostolic Church | North Forest Home | Top of page

Judge Not ...

Christians should not judge other Christians. We should not judge another man's servant (Romans 14:4).

However, we should judge doctrine. The early Christians struggled with determining which novel teachings were orthodox and which heretical. They were not shy about expelling heretics.

The main difficulty with properly judging doctrine is determining the guidelines and procedures for how we know what is true. If we make our denominational distinctives the standard we will be forever judging other Christians as un-Christian. Thus, . . .

• Fundamentalists think Denominationalism is dead Christianity.
• Evangelicals think Catholics are not even Christians.
• Charismatics think those who don't speak in tongues are not saved.
• The Eastern Orthodox Churches think Catholics are not united to the Church — and vice-versa.
• And on and on . . .

We need the proper perspective. The essential, core Christian doctrines were defined by the early Church in the Nicene creed. We should use this as our basis for which doctrines are essential.

We should accept other Christians as brothers and sisters in Christ even if they have different opinions and beliefs of non-essential doctrines.

One Apostolic Church | North Forest Home | Top of page

Anti-Catholic ...

Sadly, I discovered that many Fundamentalist, Evangelical, Protestant Christians are anti-Catholic. It's not that they prefer their form of Christianity; rather, they don't accept Catholicism as Christian at all. I learned this when I was rejected by my Protestant friends and family upon my conversion to the Catholic Church. I was joyous; they were sad. Weird.

If you are anti-Catholic, don't be. Learn the truth about Catholic teaching.

One Apostolic Church | North Forest Home | Top of page

Actions ...

What you can do . .

• Keep going to church or a home fellowship.
• Find a like-minded church.
• Find like-minded people in your church.
• Start prayer, meditation, and devotional Bible-study meetings.
• Be vocal with your ideas about what church is. Especially discuss these views with the pastors.
• Avoid fanaticism. Be loving. Be accepting of others.
• Create a movement, a revolution against entrenched organized religion.
• Provide support for others who are like-minded.

Critical mass — when enough people at enough churches share their views it will cause change. If you don't believe this consider the liberal Christian movement. Because so many liberal Christians are so vocal in expressing their view that Christianity is old-fashioned and needs to adapt to modern culture we now have the large-scale corruption of Christianity . . .

• Liberal Christian denominations are numerous.
• Christian liberalism has invaded even the Episcopal and Catholic Churches.
• Most mainline denominations have corresponding liberal denominations. For example, there are liberal Baptist denominations, liberal Presbyterian denominations, etc.
• Orthodox Christianity is having difficulty affecting the modern culture because of this fragmentation.
• In opposing Christian liberalism many Evangelical, Fundamentalist Churches have become extreme, dogmatic, bigoted, irrelevant, out of touch with the culture, fanatical and ineffective.

Article originally written September 19, 2009.

Statement of Faith | About the author

One Apostolic Church | North Forest Home | Top of page