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What does the world thinks of the church today?

The church today is struggling. They are having a difficult time in reaching the young people. Church’s attendance is lower than it was years ago.

It’s not because people are working on Sunday; even though that is part of it.

The fact is people are choosing to have fun instead. They want to party and live it up. They want to drink and have sexual intercourse with whoever they want. Their motto is, “You only live once.”

I’m not criticizing that. Believe me, when I was in my late teens and early 20’s, I too loves to party. I was a party animal.

I believe what is keeping our young people out of the church is how they perceived the Christians inside of the church.

First of all, there are those who believed that you can be a believer and still live it up. There are some that say that they believed in God. They just wants to have their fun while they are young.

Then there are those who perceived those in the church to be hypocrite. They sees them as being self-righteous. They sees them as being very judgmental over their lifestyles and choices that they make. They feel that if they are Christians, they should love everyone like Jesus does; and not judge them.

For example: some believed that those in the church are being judgmental over those who are homosexual. I’m not going too far into that because that is a whole different blog.

The point I’m getting at is that those in the church are perceived as being Self-righteous.

I have to admit, even though I’m a Christian and have been since 1990, I have struggled with the ideas of self-righteous people in the church.

I’m going to start at the beginning, I was baptized Catholic as a baby and confirmed Lutheran. Yet, I didn’t really knew the Lord until later on in life. I came to accept the Lord in 1990 after the Lord spoke to me. But first, I saw a movie called, “I Know my first name is Steven.” It was about a boy who was kidnapped and molested. I related to him; to reason I may tell you later in another blog. I then had the TV on to Dwight Thompson, a televangelist. At that time, I didn’t much care for televangelist. Somehow, I couldn’t turned the channel because of some forms of spirit. Then one evening he preached on Luke 15, the Prodigal Son. That night, the Lord spoke to me saying that he loved me and was always there for me. I cried as I accepted the Lord. I was soon re-baptized, by being submerge in water. I’m now a member of a Nazarene Church in Moorhead, MN. The church is Bridgepointe Community.

As I said earlier, I too had struggled with self-righteous people in the church. I almost left the church because of it. I still believed in God and Jesus. I just didn’t believed in the church.

I think that this may be one of the reason that keeps the young people out of the church. They may believed in God and Jesus; but they see some of the people and/or the pastor as being self-righteous.

I believed that young people are searching for something and not finding it in the church. They are finding it elsewhere; like a cult for example.

There are churches that are trying to reach the young people. They are going to where they needs to go. I give credit to Prairieheights Community Nazarene Church for doing just that. At the same time they are not becoming lost to the world.

As Jesus said, “even though we lived in the world, we are not a part of the world.” it doesn’t mean that we are to become self-righteous though. Remembered, Jesus accused the Pharisees of being self-righteous and look where that got him. They crucified Him!!

I have been teaching Sunday School the Sermon on the Mount series. It’s a very good lesson on how we are to live for Jesus. It’s also show us how we can reach the lost without being judgmental.

In the end times, there will be even less people in church than it is now. Christians are being persecuted because of their faith and will be before Jesus returns again.

It’s not just the world’s fault though. Some people in the church are just too blame. Some of them bring it on themselves. The Pharisees did in Jesus’ days as well.