6. The Growing Tendency Toward Recreational Rather Than Spiritual Pursuits.
Participation by preachers and laymen in questionable recreational activities is an indication that we are not a "separated" people any longer. World Series ball games, corrupt television programs, prize fights, community affairs where gambling and nudeness are paramount and such like indulgences are grieving God's Spirit away from us. God is a jealous God and will not look on sin of any nature.
Banqueting is becoming a fixed routine in many conventions and gatherings. While some things of this nature are not in themselves sinful, yet we are falling into a trend of socialized gospel. We ought to enjoy prolonged prayer vigils together more than periods of feasting and frivolity. It is a shifting of emphasis which is spelling our downfall.
Participation by preachers and laymen in questionable recreational activities is an indication that we are not a "separated" people any longer. World Series ball games, corrupt television programs, prize fights, community affairs where gambling and nudeness are paramount and such like indulgences are grieving God's Spirit away from us. God is a jealous God and will not look on sin of any nature.
Banqueting is becoming a fixed routine in many conventions and gatherings. While some things of this nature are not in themselves sinful, yet we are falling into a trend of socialized gospel. We ought to enjoy prolonged prayer vigils together more than periods of feasting and frivolity. It is a shifting of emphasis which is spelling our downfall.
Halloween parties are now being sponsored inside the sanctuary and in some churches a kitchen is standard equipment: "Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set" (Proverbs 22:28).
7. Academic and Cultural Over-Emphasis in our Colleges.
Originally our schools were founded to serve the church exclusively in producing and training preachers and missionaries to save the lost. Now the church is called upon to support a college curriculum on the level of a State University with a minor emphasis on producing spiritual giants and Bible preachers and teachers.
Also we have set a pace in our cultural and recreational curriculum which tends to have the same sway over our students as any worldly college. We follow all the silly customs of Freshman initiation, no matter how stupid it looks to the outside or what scars it leaves on conscientious students who want to be an example of true holiness. Our "wide open" scope of academic and cultural "spread" opens the doors to unspiritual people allowing them to pursue their secular pursuits and introduce worldliness into our midst. They get the benefit of church supported training and go out on their own when finished and never put back a thing into the church -- in service or money.
We don't feel it is the mission of the church of Christ to educate the sons of the world. This is a violation of Bible separation from the world.
All this grieves the Spirit. He cannot reign in complete control over an arrangement of this kind.
8. An Improper Distribution of Finance
The law of love as stated by the Apostle James tells us that "if a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?"
We seem to have developed a "double standard" of ministerial support. It seems not to concern our central leadership that many Home Mission pastors get little or no support to carry forth a very vital ministry here in America. They are expected to rough it through and carry their own financial load by secular work and also help pay the church's bills and budgets while at the same time we multiply offices with salaried men on a high level and continue to take on larger building projects and pay no attention to the decaying Home Mission front. I believe God expects strict and just stewardship in this realm as in others. A "feast or famine" standard of ministerial support is contrary to the law of love and the scriptural implication of the reason for tithing.
In the field of education we are not getting sanctified results from sanctified dollars.
Multiplicity of departments and their heads are taking an increasing amount of support which should be directed more specifically to the actual function of the preaching of the Gospel. Holiness evangelism on the level of personal witness and revival efforts is still the "cutting edge" of the "Gospel sword."
Strict stewardship of the tithe and offerings of the people of God is a distinct responsibility imposed upon all in authority by God Himself. We can commit the sin of robbery on a general plane the same as individuals who refuse to pay their tithe. We are under moral obligation to use sanctified money at every level for God's purposes, rightly interpreted.
Strict stewardship of the tithe and offerings of the people of God is a distinct responsibility imposed upon all in authority by God Himself. We can commit the sin of robbery on a general plane the same as individuals who refuse to pay their tithe. We are under moral obligation to use sanctified money at every level for God's purposes, rightly interpreted.
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