Regardless, I felt like I needed to resolve Hebrews 10:25 for myself, with god – independently of what Wayne says.

This posting really helped me tremendously!

It really needs no other backup as it stands on its own truth and what exactly what I needed.
But as I was reading it, I felt like I had a mini-revelation and I felt a “nudge” (as Wayne calls it) to post something here – so I will.

I grew up protestant in a small (79K) town north of Kansas City in the Midwest that was predominantly catholic – which is an oddity in the mid-west USA. Protestant churches were a minority in this town.

The Protestants were always quick to condemn the Catholics because they said we do not need a priest to come between man and god.

I do agree with this completely and whole-heartedly.

But what I didn’t realize until reading this excerpt by Jack Gray was that the Protestants had actually, ironically, done the exact same thing.

They had set up that you had to be in a church or you couldn’t be a Christian. To be a Christian required regular church attendance as well as tithing, membership, witnessing as well as many other external rules for living in their denomination’s “manual”.

As I thought about this, I was just amazed at the irony.

The very thing they railed at the Catholics for doing, they were doing themselves.

They would flatly reject Catholicism because we don’t need man to get to god, but then in the next breath they would say that to be a Christian required regular church attendance, membership and participation.

I hate to use the word hypocrite to describe what I’m referring to here because it naturally connotes some hostility which I do not desire.

But for them to say on one hand that Catholicism was wrong – and yet on the other say that we are required to go to church as they define it, is clearly hypocritical.

As a fundamental principle, you either have to believe as a core conviction that you need man or man’s institutions to get to god, or you don’t.

And while we do need other Christian brothers and sisters in our walk, it’s more for our help – and theirs, not as a requirement that our souls are saved or to be “Christians” and we will positively be misled and go to hell if we don’t. That diminishes God’s power and requires “man” to help us get to god.

Anyway – I was just truly struck with the irony of it all and felt nudged to post this.

Secondly, I feel so torn because my friends that are leaders of "nondenominational churches" agree very much with the abomination of the denominations, yet things like this are looked at as attacking their ministry as well. For me it is easy to say that, I give up "my" ministry and I just seek Jesus each day… but my heart goes out to these servants of the Lord who have faithfully served as "pastors" etc… While I agree that we should have "His church, His way," part of me still sees so much good coming from the faithful teaching of the Word by some of these fellowships.

Shall we call them all bad?

What advice would you give to the young pastor of a Calvary Chapel who is faithfully teaching the word of God to many people each week and lives are really being changed despite the "leaven in the church" and the "disconnectedness" ?

…feeling torn