Dave and I have found an awesome church here in our area. It took some doing, but we found one that is relevant, young, growing, dynamic, and firmly based on God's Word. Our pastor is relatively young as are the rest of the staff. They believe in being honest about their failings and in being relevant to today's culture without compromising their faith. I felt like I had come home almost instantly.
So the other night at Bible study one of our friends mentions that we should pray for the pastors at our church. He seemed to have a specific reason for this, so we asked why. Apparantly a very conservative Christian radio host in another state posted an entry on a blog about our pastors and their "lack of maturity" and how pastors like ours are the problem with churches today. The host had apparantly looked at ONE page of our church's website -- the one featuring the staff. She lamented the fact that they had worldly, spiky hair, answered a question about whether superman or batman would win in a fight, and stated that their favorite movie was one that was R-rated and contained bad language. The post was very hostile, mean, and judgmental and our church has been fielding anonymous, hate-filled emails ever since.
What this woman failed to write is that if you actually read the church's mission statement or dig deeper into the website you'll find that our pastors are not worldly, preach expositorily every week, and don't hesitate to call a spade a spade and call us as Christians on our sins.
The point? I've met several Christians in my life like the host who bashed our church -- Christians who would rather point out what is wrong with people they neither know nor care about, and who seem to have no patience for differences of opinion within the church -- and their attitude always angers me. Why are we wasting our time bashing each other when Jesus specifically told us to love one another and when there are people around the world who desperately need to hear the gospel? If I weren't a Christian, I wouldn't want anything to do with this kind of Christianity.
