I'm 27 years old and I've been a member of the same church since I was born. I never really considered changing churches until a couple of years ago, but even then I keep thinking I'm gonna move soon, so I figured that there was no point.
Until a couple of years ago, we'd had the same pastor all of my life. We called him Brother Don and he was wonderful. He was a good pastor and although he didn't condone certain things, he taught us not to judge or condemn people who did those things. He loved all of us and he taught us to love each other and love everyone else we come in contact with as well. He treated everyone in the church like family and he gave awesome sermons.
When he left, we had another pastor come for a little while and then had a permanent pastor this past summer. We call him pastor Jason and I don't like saying this about him, but I don't think that he's a very good pastor.
It's hard for me to say these things without sounding judgmental of him and I acknowledge that, but he seems judgmental of others. He doesn't really teach unconditional love, but rather loving only people who go to your church or would be willing to go to your church. Perhaps I'm mistaken about that, but it seems like that's what he was saying. He also seems to like to judge others for the bad things they do.
He doesn't give good sermons and sometimes I feel like we hear more about his oldest son than we hear about God. Brother Don has four children and loves them as much as anyone loves their children, but he didn't talk about them much because he wanted to stay on subject and not tell a story about them unless it applied to the sermon. Jason FORCES stories about his oldest son into the sermon and if he doesn't have one, he just tells one for fun. I know people like to talk about their kids, but when your a pastor and spend most of your sermons talking about them, that's not good. Also it's always JUST his oldest son, never his other two kids and he makes it clear that his oldest is his favorite.. He says it's because his oldest son is adopted and the other two are biological, so he got to choose his oldest, but got stuck with his other two. This makes me wonder more about his character.
I love him and love everyone in the church, but I don't agree with most of them on a lot of things. For instance, this new friend of mine named Dave just came into my life. He happens to be an atheist, so as I Christian, I worry about him, but I love him. I want to be his friend, but so many people in our church hate atheists. They dehumanize them and judge them as being horrible people. They judge me for having anything to do with them and tell me that Christians shouldn't do that. They do the same with my gay friend, John and my jewish friend Spencer. I want to love everyone the way Jesus did, but the church doesn't seem to agree that we should,
So my question is should I feel bad for wanting to change churches?
You know? A church that teaches you to hate is not a church of God. Guess whose. Sure you love the churchgoers, and you 'love' pastor jason, but it's not about them right? You know what? If you can notice the wrong things your pastor is teaching you and still love him as a person? Then you're already a great christian. So my answer is, it doesnt matter. You already have your solid faith! But the others dont, so my advice is, dont change 'your' church, change 'your church'
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(Rating: 5)
Thank you so much for your advice. It sounds like a great plan and I really appreciate it. Thank you and God Bless you!
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