Finding a church fellowship.

[John]

I realise there are a few people who visit this forum that may well have strong opinions about this subject, and for personal reasons. So I would like to open up a discussion that may well help others in finding suitable fellowship with other Christian believers.

From my own perspective, even though I believe that much of the visible church is corrupt and apostate, I also believe strongly that many true and sincere believers have found themselves in the snare of wolves in sheeps clothing, spoken of by Jesus Himself. For this reason I believe it to be crucial that devout and committed believers, who are dead to themselves and fully submitted to the leading of the Holy Spirit through the instruction of the Scriptures, take a stand on the truth, speaking loudly and clearly to self professing Christians throughout Christendom.

To be honest, I have found myself for many years of my Christian walk being deceived concerning true Christian fellowship. What's more, I have also experienced the desire to turn my back on the visible church completely, which can work its way out in a whole manner of ways. The sad thing is, when I look around at the way in which much of the visible church I have been used to having fellowship with over the years, there is little surprise that many Christians are disillusioned and led to seek an alternative.

If there is any one thing that I believe the fellowship I am now involved with has a correct perspective on, and as a result has become more precious than ever to others and myself, it is our prime motive for meeting together in the first place. It has nothing at all to do with numbers, facilities, or resources. Nor does it have a main target of becoming a strong organization, or even seeing the masses of people living around us coming into our meetings to hear what we have to say, even though we would not despise this happening. Our prime motive for meeting together, apart from worshipping the Lord together, is to strengthen and support one another, that we may complete the race in Christ that we have begun.

Hebrews 10:24-25
24  And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,
25  not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

[Mark]

I thought I'd wait a day before responding, to make sure I had given your post a reasonably thoughtful reply.  I don't know how life is in the Old World, but where I am a decent church is not hard to find.  I know I've seen some pretty rancid ones.  The church I grew up in was marginally tepid, but over-all, I must say that calling the Church corrupt seems like a bit of a stretch to me.  When I read some of the writing from a hundred years ago, I find them dealing with all of the same issues that we have today, under different names.  If the Emergent Church problem follows its predecessors, then it will run for a couple of decades and die out, only to re-emerge under a new and more fashonable name later.

As for the purpose of our meeting together, I could not possibly disagree with you.  Because we agree on what a church should be, but disagree on what it is, I must assume that the difference between us is not one of ideology but experience.  Either that, or we're speaking two different languages (some might argue that English English is not the same as American Enslish, but I think we're close enough).  Therefore, I must assume that the churches in your area fare far worse than the churches in mine, even despite the fact that I've got the Crystal Cathedral in my back yard.

The church I'm going to has fellowship groups, where we can get together with like-minded individuals and relate to each other as fellow Christians.  It's not unlike this forum, except with more face time.  This kind of church is not hard to find, here.