SERENITY & GRIPPED BY GOD

Today I will continue yesterday's refrain.

It pleases me when anyone says, "I just love my church. There's so much happening. I get so much from pastor's messages. Lives are really being changed. I love the worship music, it's so uplifting, enthusiastic, and all genders and generations are active and helping out. We have weeknight small groups and ours is closely knit and loving, like a family. "

That speaks of an environment that is conducive to adoration, teaching and learning and service. Who could want anything more than that? How can you improve on that? And yet, some people have sensibilities or needs that are not met there.

DO BELIEVERS OUTGROW THEIR NEED FOR CHURCH?

Maybe there are times or intervals at which churches are no longer able to nourish some peoples' faith.

Why say something like that?

We know that people leave church for assorted reasons. Some leave church A to go to church B. That's not the theme of this piece. I know people who have stopped going to a church in a building, anywhere. They are people who have been in church for years and for whom the traditions have been important. Yes we can talk about solidarity and church being a family and small groups being where the growth truly happens. The people I refer to must not be faulted, because their reasons for departure are not chiefly because the preaching or the music or the programs have changed or because of church politics or petty squabbles as well as escalated rows. Those factors may have influenced their choices, but primarily they have a deep longing for more of God or more with God.

Do you think that some believers outgrow their need for church?

MICHAEL COREN’S ‘HATRED - ISLAM’S WAR ON CHRISTIANITY

Michael Coren is an award winning author, broadcaster and speaker. His newest book is entitled, 

Here is a synopsis of the presenting concern which becomes the substance of his thesis inside the covers.

"Christians are the most persecuted identifiable group on earth. This is not the opinion of some but the informed view of most -- including the United Nations. What is seldom admitted, however, is that the vast majority of the nations that carry out the oppression, intolerance, violence, rape, and murder are Islamic. While Christians suffer in North Korea and parts of India, it is in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, and even Indonesia and Malaysia where the situation is dark and becoming worse. The statistics and stories are truly terrifying in proportion and degree and as Islam expands and becomes increasingly aggressive, fundamentalist, and confident, Christian minorities live in fear and face a bleak future.

Hatred outlines the history of the relationship between Islam and Christianity, explains what Islam actually teaches about the Christian faith, and gives numerous examples of the experience of Christians throughout the Islamic world. It explains not only what happens, but why it happens, and deliberately challenges the comforting but false idea that all of this is somehow an aberration and contrary to Islamic thought.”

Here is Michael Coren’s Bio