I think what you said in this post, the statement in bold letters, basically sums up the issue.
I crinch sometimes when I hear preachers preach. There's only one pastor I've been under in my entire life that I've felt comfortable taking new converts or interested individuals to listen to at all times, and that was my pastor back home in DC, which is why I attended his church for so long. He preaches the truth, preaches strongly against sin, but I have never heard him be purposely offensive or outright disrespectful. I sat under pastors who will preach and mention young people over the pulpit and use them as examples for "what not to do" or spread their sin over the pulpit, to my shock and dismay, and personally wanted to walk out of the church, and I wasn't even the point and topic of the conversation. I've sat under pastors and in churches where I quite frankly didn't feel comfortable bringing the lost to the church. I've felt more comfortable in some cases having people come to my own home with a select saints from the church I know can handle evangelism, and work with them myself to receive the Holy Ghost, because I've seen people who are "working" with the lost for them to receive the spirit of God doing all sorts of insanity. Grabbing their throats, putting their hands on their jaw and moving their mouths up and down, telling them they can't get a drink of water because the Devil's trying to distract them.
I've held it in for a long time, out of respect and out of respect for order and decency, even when I've been admonished for not inviting enough people to church, I've literally wanted to say I can't invite people to this mess, they'd think I'm nuts, your nuts, and we're all nuts and it's not just because we dance and speak in tongues it's because some of us actually are nuts.
I guess when you get to much "man" in the church and not enough of God you get these problems.
Going to the young people, I was thinking about today's society and how many distractions there are for young people, and even young people in the church. Ipads, Ipods, cellphones, tv, internet, facebook, twitter, etc. People don't even know how to put together whole sentences because the majority of what they say and read on any given day is in the confines of 140 characters on twitter. Young people are not being taught critical thinking skills, they are being constantly dumbed down by the media, I mean I have the opportunity to go out on the streets and witness to some of these young people and have seen just the gradual dumbing down of society.
And we as the saints of God have an obligation to reach out to these souls, and in order to do that we can't just hand them tracks about
Acts 2:38 and the godhead and expect them to read it, comply, and run to the church on Sunday. I think some people feel like passing out tracts is witnessing, and that's one of my biggest pet peeves. I gave him a "Understanding the Godhead in 3 Steps" tract, yeup that'll get him off drugs.
While all this is going on our own young people go astray because we don't offer them anything but a set of "dos and don'ts" and tell them if they leave the church they're going to Hell. I get aggravated with parents who think that by taking their kids to church on Sunday and Wednesday night they're doing their jobs as Christian parents. Your children are in church generally 6 to 7 hours a week, but in school being brainwashed by the world monday-friday from 8am to 3pm and you're surprised that they're distracted by the world?
Even the kids in the church have no desire to know Christ, because the truth is a lot of the adults in the church don't really know Christ. They know Apostolic doctrine. They don't know Jesus. Church has now become something we do because we don't want to go to Hell, rather then something we do to come together to touch the throne of Heaven and experience God. Young people are distracted by the world because they're not interested in going to church, hearing the pastor preach and never seeing any results.
The Bible stresses instilling the word of God, and it has to be the parents, not the pastor. We have to put the word of God in our children from day one, and I mean overload them with it. It can't just be Bible stories, we have to fall in love with the Word of God as a body and stop simply relying on comfortable and fiery preaching to keep us and the youth of our churches. There's a lot of shouting going on in the churches now, lots of dogmatic preaching, lots of "I'm going to Heaven and you're not because...", but not a lot of loving Jesus. It seems like more and more I go to churches and it's like a bunch of people sitting in a building with the door locked and Jesus is standing outside the doorstep of his own house with the weak and damaged soul of a sinner in his hand knocking on the door asking "Can we please come in?"
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