The State of Bashing and Comparing- How Sad!

Its really sad to think of the way the church is acting in some aspects.

One major thing I found in Chapter one of Philippians is Paul's yearning to see the Philippians and his prayer:
"(9) And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ."

What came to my mind is the competition that churches nowadays have. Churches now compare numbers and staff and everything. Denominations bash each other. The Charismatics call the Presbyterians and Baptists rigid and uptight and old, and the Baptists call the Charismatics crazy vision seeing weirdos and all seem to be in a race to get the largest numbers to prove that their denomination is better.

But, it doesn't just stop at denominations, it goes even deeper.
Like-believing churches also have competition.

I can remember a church I was a part of and a similar situation. I was a part of a Mexico mission trip where two churches joined together for the trip (of the same denomination, in fact one even was birthed from the other as a church plant) and a comment was said by a student and one of the leaders made the comment that if you go to their youth group, you can learn about the bible- implying that the other church was not doing a good job of teaching during youth group. I was just so upset by that comment.


Churches are always comparing. I have even been known to do it. When I was in charge of the podcasting at a previous church, I was happy when we had more podcasts of sermons than another church. I would actually look at this churches podcast site to see if we were still #1 in the podcast number. That is the stupidest thing ever if you ask me.

We should be happy to see growth in other churches, even if its not in our denomination. As long as these other churches believe in the big picture of the fact that Jesus Christ was Fully God and Fully Man and Died for sins for all, it shouldn't matter if a different church is growing faster than mine.

We need to be praying for other churches just as we pray for ours that their love would abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that they may be able to discern what is bet and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.