3 Bad Reasons to Leave your Church, How cults begin, Spring has sprung

At the Millennial Evangelical blog, Chris Martin wrote a piece on 3 Bad Reasons to Leave Your Church. Chris is 24 years old, feels called to be a pastor and currently works as a Social Media Facilitator at LifeWay Christian Resources and is pursuing his M.Div. at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I have not read a great quantity of articles at his site, but I did enjoy this piece. At the bottom of it, he has a link to a companion piece called 3 Good Reasons to Leave Your Church. Here is 3 Bad Reasons' opening paragraph:

Stop treating your local church like your high school girlfriend, and start treating it like the bride of Christ.

You don’t leave the church when it doesn’t share the same musical interests, when it hurts your feelings, or when a newer, more popular one catches your eye.

The people of God, the Church around the world, is the bride of Christ, and the bride of Christ deserves the faithfulness of a bride, not the summer crush you bailed on when you were a jerk in college.

Your church is broken because it’s made up of broken people, including yourself. Abandoning the local church is only acceptable under a few extreme circumstances we’ll address on Friday. Other than in certain circumstances, the people of God have the responsibility to sacrificially love their local churches as Jesus has.

If anyone has the right to abandon the adulterous, idolatrous bride called “Church,” it’s God, and he hasn’t, so we need to be careful how quick we are to bail when the going gets tough.

Here are three bad reasons to leave the local church:

Read more by clicking the link above

This is how cults begin.

False teachers generate followers for themselves, not for Jesus. If the teacher is beloved more than the object of her teaching is, then there is a problem. Like this:

The tweeter could have meant to say "I'll read her inspiring piece later" but given the amount and fervency related to Mrs Moore, I doubt it. Moore so often repeats the mantra that she talks with God and He gives her things to say, that it is no wonder her followers mistake her blog essays for inspired writing, no different than the truly God-breathed words given to the 66 writers of the bible.

Or this:

Manic women from Houston do not have the power to awaken a soul. That is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. Even creepier, is the reference to 'mama Beth.' it couldn't be any closer to the verse in Revelation 2:23 where the LORD promises to strike the metaphorical false prophetess Jezebel's spiritual children (of her second generation of false teaching) dead unless they repent.

I did not have to cherry pick these. It was a day where Mrs Moore had written some drivel on her blog and the followers were discussing it in droves. There was a lot of chatter. There was SO MUCH of this kind of adulation and worship of Beth Moore it was actually hard to narrow it down to these two.

These tweets and the thousands just like them aimed at Moore, and the millions just like them aimed at Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn and others, fulfill the promise made via the Spirit by Timothy:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, (2 Timothy 4:3)

These women are heaping up false teachers to suit their passions. Whatever passion you want to fleshily indulge, there is a false teacher to fit.

Spring has sprung, by the weather (for us here in GA) and by the calendar. My yard has a burst of color, a chorus of tweets, and two new baby lambs added to the farm family. When I arrived home at 3:30 after a long week of school, the warm sun and bird song drew me to the swing, and not to the front door. I dumped my stuff, dug out my camera, and walked the yard taking photos. Then I simply sat in the swing and gently rocked in the sun, listening to birds, the sheep, some children playing next door, the occasional car, and the trees in the breeze.

I stayed there until the sun went behind the house, almost two hours. I thought about the regularity of the cycles, the silent march of invisible seasons gracing the earth for a time and then wisping away to make room for the next season's turn to touch the earth. The time now is for new life, buds, birds, bushes.

I thought about the majesty of our God, ordaining each and every day under the sun. There is nothing new, but then again every year it is all new again. The dogwood blooms. The forsythia blooms. The baby birds explore. The lambs are born.

He made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. (Psalm 104:19)

You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you. (Nehemiah 9:6)

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:16)

We are truly blessed to worship the one true God. He alone is worthy, for the earth is His and everything in it. What a beautiful world. What a beautiful God.