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Posts in category Complaining

Critics…

Jan07
2008 4 Comments Written by Jeff Slater

I’ve read this quote from Rob Bell on a few other blogs, and I think it’s excellent. The world is expressing great need, but so many Christians are too busy criticizing, complaining and nitpicking to do anything about it. I’m getting tired of it.

Here’s the quote:

There are around a billion people in the world who don’t have clean drinking water, and 46 million Americans don’t have health care. That means if they get sick, they don’t have anywhere to go. Half of the world, 3 billion people, live on less than two American dollars a day, so the world is an emergency.

It’s on fire.

It’s drowning.

It’s an absolute crisis, and when followers of Jesus can think of nothing better to do with their time than to pick apart and shred to pieces the work of other followers of Jesus who are trying to do something about the world, that’s tragic, and I don’t owe those people anything. The world is desperately in need of people who will break themselves open and pour themselves out for the reconciliation of all things. When a Christian can find nothing better to do with their time in the face of this much pain and heartbreak, you start realizing that some Christians need to be saved.

Rob Bell – Relevant Magazine, January/February 2008 (69)

Posted in Critics, Rob Bell

No Whining!

Oct17
2007 5 Comments Written by Jeff Slater

Trey Morgan has written an excellent piece about complainers in the church. With his kind permission, I share it with you:

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SPIRITUAL TEMPER TANTRUMS

1 Peter 2:2-3 “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

What a great picture for those whiny Christians, who are in every church in America. They wear their spiritual feelings on their sleeves and whine about everything. Churches just can’t ever seem to get everything perfect enough for them and so they are never happy.

  • The worship arrangements are just not what they think they should be.
  • They have never liked one single preacher the church has ever hired.
  • They are the ones that constantly cry, “So-in-so hurt my feelings (or did something I didn’t like) so I’m just going to quit coming to church.”
  • “But we’ve never done it like this before.”
  • They whine, “I don’t like the decision the church leaders made about this, so I’m withholding my contribution to show my displeasure.”

Come on people, it’s one thing for my six year old son to occasionally show his immaturity and stomp his feet or fall in the floor and throw a fit because he’s not getting his way. But when you’re an adult and STILL showing your spiritual immaturity by stomping your feet and saying, “Fine, you’re not my friend anymore, and I’m not playing with you again” something is wrong.

Unfortunately, churches everywhere are spending too much of their time trying to deal with these “two year old” adults and their spiritual temper-tantrums, instead of trying to reach the lost around them. When will we catch on that God says it’s about unity, growing up and becoming mature spiritual adults.

So my advice to those adults who are continually throwing these spiritual temper-tantrums because something isn’t the way you like it, is the same advice I tell my little boy when he throws a fit … “Grow up, you’re acting like a big baby.”

By Trey Morgan

treymorgan.net

Posted in Church, Maturity, Whining