Many times believers and non-believers have feared if Jesus truly approves of what the Christian Church has become today or has been for centuries ago. Is the Church what Christ conceived it to be?
Are we all that Jesus desires us to be? Are both the traditional and contemporary churches doing Church the wrong way?
There are numerous approaches to answer this question, and surely there can be many ways to debate this question. It’s even a fact of Christianity that answering this question has led to the various different persuasions of Christianity, and the different ways we believe Christianity to be.
The church, as a united ecumenical entity, has more than its share of critics these days.
Sometimes the criticism is unwarranted. People project their issues onto a congregation or onto the church, which is never healthy.
And, of course, the church will inevitably run into criticism.
A Google search about the church will instill the fear of the Lord in you. Or rather it will make you imagine God as a creation of the human’s mind, and perhaps non-existent.
Multi scandals have rocked virtually all church denominations.
The Roman Catholic Church’s age-old connection to pedophiles, sex cults and child abuses have become a staple of all news outlets. So is the Methodist church. Somehow, the Anglican and Episcopal churches.
Contemporary evangelical denominations are also not exempt from similar or even more heinous moral indictments. Apart from committing moral indecorous acts within their spaces, they are oftener culpable of commercializing faith to feed their egos and finance their selfish whims.
It is a misfortune!
One church or the other is accused of something and is left at the mercy of the court of public opinion, which is often fissured.
A batch of Christian apologists has however turned deaf ears and eyes to all the stellar shreds of evidence that incriminates our churches.
Rather, they maintain that what the church is doing is counter-cultural and by that virtue alone, it will never be met with universal applause. The Gospel, even when powerfully shared, got John the Baptist, the Apostle Paul, Jesus, and the prophets killed, just to name a few. While it seems strange to say it, even love, when seen fully and magnificently, gets scrapped.
But other times, the church as a societal institution absolutely deserve the criticism that comes on its way.
Often these days, it seems, churches are not caricatured or persecuted because they’re fighting nobly. Most of the times, they just shoot themselves in the foot with what they do.
So, in recent times, the question that has prevailed the human society is; who between the traditional and contemporary churches have brought the church to more disrepute?
This week Zambian-born preacher and founder of Imperial City Church based in South Africa Prophet Isaiah Brian Sovi weighed in on the conflict.
In a post issued via his Facebook page, the charismatic young cleric challenged popular opinion that often argues that newer churches are doing a lot of wrong things, so it is better for believers serious about their Christian life to go back to old Traditional Churches.
We publish the full text below:
“These new churches are doing a lot of wrong things…It is better to go back to our old Traditional Churches.” You have probably heard this statement many times before or even probably used it yourself.
Today I want us to interrogate this statement and the issues surrounding it.
This statement is most often made by people who have encountered many things in most ‘charismatic and prophetic churches…’ which they never ‘saw or witnessed ’ in their old churches.
So this begs the question: Is this alleged ‘lack of morals’ a church denomination problem or a human problem.
Let us take a microscopic look at our old ‘Traditional Churches’ for a while.
The Catholic Church has for hundreds of years been at the center of criticism for allowing its followers to drink alcohol, drug smuggling, Mafia affiliation and inability to address the issue of child molestation and sex slavery endured by most so-called ‘virgin nuns’.
The Catholic Church has been reported to have paid over USD$3 Billion to cover these issues up and recently the Pope himself admitted they were a major concern to the Institution.
But well let’s go back to them they are our old ‘Traditional Churches’ after all… After all, they are just better at hiding.
Secondly, according to an article by a British newspaper called The Telegraph in 2015, the Methodist church was cited for child sexual abuse among other issues in the church. Mind you, this article was a result of a meticulous investigation.
But Yes..no problem… Let’s go back to our Traditional Churches.
In 2004, sex scandals rocked the Seventh-day Adventist church and in 2017 some leaders were forced to resign over smuggling allegations.
And for the record, these activities are happening not in one isolated country or continent but all over the world.
But well let’s go back to them they are our old ‘Traditional Churches’ after all…
I can point out every church organization out there and show you something wrong they have done which they either admitted into doing are was proven by the relevant authorities.
And now let me show a sample list of ‘Traditional Churches’ that support same-sex marriage:
Anglican Church of Korea
Anglican Church of Southern Africa
The Episcopal Church
Hyanglin Church in Korea
Church of South India
Evangelical Church of India
Members Church of God International (Known as Ang Dating Daan as their Presiding Minister Bro. Eliseo Soriano is a Prominent Member of LGBT)
United Church of Christ in Japan
United Church of Christ in the Philippines
Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa
Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK)
Methodist Church of Southern Africa
Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa
This is a just a sample of the names but well let’s go back to them they are our old ‘Traditional Churches’ after all…
At this point, I want to mention to you that the moment you realize that every institution as long as it is composed of human beings can never be 100% perfect according to your preference and high expectation.
Everyone in this world is on the road to perfection.
To conclude I will sign off with the words of English Poet Alexander Pope who said,
“To err is human, to forgive divine’
and Freeman Dyson who said,
“Human beings are fallible. Only people blinded by ideology fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility.”
See the original post here:
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