Stew West:

Hi, Thanks John for that, very cool – my heart still beats that story. Spot on!

In response to some other posts. Some popcorn thoughts/reactions.

I also think one needs to make a distinction between the word “church”, as somewhere you go to o…n Sunday, verse ‘being” The Church.

I have also struggled sometimes, to point unchurched friends to some “sunday churches”, because I didn’t want them to think that ‘that’ is what following Jesus is. Even some of the silly things seen done on TV, by ‘the church’ or ‘Christians’.

I think that when some people may have said that they are “leaving church” (or when equated to “Christianity” ) it is actually in fact because they so long to follow and love Jesus, that they have done so, but I would agree that is very important to be ‘in community’.

This could also be in the context where the label of “Christian” and/or “church” is actually more detrimental and for a recent example, as John Ellis said in his “Tonight” Newspaper article – that one of the issues that was so confusing for him with his time in the states, was that “the God they worshipped was different in every state”.

Perhaps this thought on tradition from Jesus has something to do with it when he said “Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull’s-eye in fact: These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn’t in it. They act like they are worshiping me, but they don’t mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy, ditching God’s command and taking up the latest fads.” He went on, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions…”

I think, we all, as broken, messed up individuals have to recognize that church is not perfect, because WE make up its body parts. … got to go