The Church

http://www.gospel.com/topics/church DiscoverGodJesusAfterlifeSinBibleChurchGospelDecide What images spring to mind when you read the word church? an angry preacher ranting about hellfire and damnation to an uptight congregation a gathering of hypocrites a boring place to which your parents dragged you as a kid a group of people who believe they're right and all those other churches are wrong the place where Fun goes to die There is plenty of evidence to support each and every one of those ideas. How many people have been burned and turned off on religion by a bad experience at church? Perhaps you've been there yourself—have you ever looked at a church and thought, "if that's what being a Christian is all about, I want nothing to do with it"? If you think that "church" is about as far away from God that you can get, you're in pretty good company. Jesus himself had a lot to say about the churches and organized religion of his day. Talking to a crowd of holier-than-thou church attenders, he didn't mince words: "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You're like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it's all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you're saints, but beneath the skin you're total frauds." If your experience of the organized church matches Jesus' words—if you feel there's not much life behind the neat, orderly exterior—you're on the right track. Jesus teaches us in the Bible that a true church is not defined by the clothes we wear, the building we meet in, the airs we put on, or the style of music we use to worship.