Across town apostolics ... (was: Beards)

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>>>>> "Tyler" == Tyler G Nally <tgnally@prairienet.org> writes:

    Tyler> But apostolic pentecostals are different... it's almost
    Tyler> like you have got to *prove* yourself to be accepted.  Why
    Tyler> is it that oneness folks do this kind of thing?  Are they
    Tyler> inheritanly untrusting?  unloving?  I would think that
    Tyler> someone would be *welcome* anywhere.  Are the different
    Tyler> churches separate amongst themselves but common in name and
    Tyler> once-a-month in fellowship?  Has many a dreadfull thing
    Tyler> happened to oneness pentecostals that causes the churches
    Tyler> and the people in them to just always be on edge and wary
    Tyler> of someone new?

    Tyler> To me, it's much harder for the newcomer to open up if
    Tyler> everybody else is already in a suspicious state of being.
    Tyler> Just like the way that ousiders of oneness watch us daily
    Tyler> at work to see if we are the real article, much the same
    Tyler> goes on inside the church to keep a *probing* eye on the
    Tyler> newcomer.  I imagine that this very thing, is enough to
    Tyler> keep the newcomer from fully opening up and blossming at
    Tyler> the newly arrived at church.  At the time when the newcomer
    Tyler> needs friends the most, he/she's often treated as an
    Tyler> outsider until they've undergone a time of proof.

I think that you see this wariness in old churches that have grown
stagnant and unacustomed to seeing anybody new -- saint or sinner.
You will not feel that way in a true revival church where every new
person is viewed as either a candidate for the Holy Ghost or a worker
to help others receive it.  It takes a *LOT* of work on the part of
the pastor and ministers to feed such a revival church, but the work
is so rewarding you only realize it is work when you realize that you
and your wife haven't had an evening alone together in several weeks.
The only way such a revival can continue is by recruiting the help of
the saints, and by training them and teaching them and leading them
and teaching them leadership principles as well as the Bible.  All
these principles are in the Bible, and Jesus did the same thing, as
did the early church.

-- 
--------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
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