This is me looking down on Auckland from Mt Rangitoto(yes I need to return to the gym
)
MORE MEGASHIFT QUOTES
the year 1999 - 2000, the number of donors to U.S churches fell 14% and the average donation fell by 19%."
"In the last decade, the churches spent in the U.S $500 Billion on domestic expences - with no growth to show for it."
lilamay
Gosh it was so refreshing to read that section of text about house church.
I belonged to a church in Australia for a long time, and it also was a modern type charismatic church with a large following, however the whole thing was so rigid as regards to what should and shouldn't be done, and what was expected and not expected that it was extremely suffocating, almost like one could not spread their wings, the crunch came when even giving so much free time to the church, voluntary positions were coming up, and the paster said that 'men' had to fill these rolls...
that took the cake for me and I basically walked out of the church that day and never returned, the suffocation, the rigidity, the false masks, the hypocracy, became way too much to handle, and considering that this was a modern and spiritual church, old fashioned and rigid ways still overpowered everything......another thing is that this was like a closed group, if you were not a christian, and not part of the church you did not belong, I actually witnessed a man being given the option to marry a person within the church or leave and be ostracised...he chose to marry and do what he was told...I witnessed this in total amazement, the male concerned made the church his total life works, and without the church, without the circle of friends, without the support and social life it afforded he would have crumbled to nothing..of that many of us were aware.