| Message | Thank you for the website - it seems very similar to where God has been leading our family, which should make perfect sense since it is the biblical way, and we all read the same bible. I think that is a big problem in American churches though - pastors have all of these degrees so people tend to think that their pastor knows how to interpret and study Scripture better than they ever could, so they rely on the word from the pulpit rather than the Word from God, often never even really checking to see if things are biblical. That's one of the big things that led us to leave the church we had been a part of for years. I had not grown up in a christian home, though I became a believer at a young age, so I studied scripture on my own, and spent lots of time fellowshipping and praying and sharing with Christian friends at school. One day some missionaries from China came to visit our church in FL and the time came to take up an offering to help support them and believers in China. OUr pastor got up and said, "Now remember that anything you give to the missionaries must be above and beyond your tithe, because the tithe belongs to the church." Bells went off in my head, and I knew that wasn't scriptural. I looked into the funding of our "sister" church in Uganda, and found it was the same way - nothing from the general fund went to help our brothers and sisters (90% orphan children) who were starving, yet we were putting up flat screen TVs in the lobby. God has a better way. |