CHRISTIAN SEGREGATION

I was thinking this morning as I was eating my bowl of cereal and scrolling through some posts on Facebook, there sure is a lot of segregation in Christianity these days.  And I'm not just referring to segregation in the sense of white churches, black churches, Hispanic churches, etc.  Yes, we definitely have that, but there's more than just racial segregation going on.

Christianity is starting to look like society with all the labels people are wearing these days.  Intersectionality is wreaking havoc in our culture.  We're not happy with just being a human being, we have to have a sense of "specialness" about ourselves, so we start putting labels on ourselves.  

Let's start with Bibles.

I remember many years ago visiting a local Christian bookstore and in the Bible section there were Bibles for different groups of people.  Bibles for military people, women's Bibles, men's Bibles, Bibles for teens, and Bibles for children.  There's Bibles for those who are going through recovery for addictions.  There's the "Sportsman's Bible" (yes, that actually exists), Cowboy Bibles, and the "Bible for the Busy Mom".

Why?  Why do we need to label our Bibles?  It's the same thing, or at least it SHOULD be the same thing.  Does the added label make it more special?  I don't think so.

How about conferences?

We have women's conferences, men's conferences, Youth conferences.  Now, I'm not going to rake too hard on this category because I know there are benefits to having these types of conferences.  There are issues and concerns that these conferences address that those particular groups deal with that the others don't.  But sometimes I wonder if these will start becoming a catalyst for further segregation.  Will this cause an increase of women embracing "feminist" ideologies?  I mean, some of the women's "Bible" teachers out there seem to be right on the edge of being radical feminists and are working towards drawing women away from true biblical Christianity because they themselves subvert God's Word by making themselves out as "pastors".

How about Children's Church?

I don't like Children's Church.  I don't think the children should be removed from the church service.  This is where children are supposed to learn HOW to worship properly.  They watch how their parents worship and the parents teach their kids the importance of Communion and Baptism and answer any questions their children may have about things they didn't understand in the service.

I think Children's Church was created after many churches adopted the Van Ministry picking up kids whose parents didn't go to church.  They had the mindset, "We can go through the kids to get to the parents!!".  But what it created was a worship service filled with kids who didn't know how to behave properly so maybe an exasperated pastor came up with the idea of Children's Church to get the misbehaving kids out of the worship service into a "daycare" type of setting so there would be no more disruption.  And what they ended up with is a "daycare" because the kids went home and told mama and daddy how much "fun" they had and the parents thought, "Hmmmmm.....we got free daycare now!!!"  So, the parents pushed their kids out the door every Sunday so they can have a few hours of no kids.

How about different worship service?

Now, I don't see an issue with larger churches having separate worship services because they have a large congregation.  These are the churches that offer the same style of service each time.  They just break it up in two separate worship times to accommodate the number of members they have.

The "different" worship service I'm talking about are those churches who have a "traditional" service with traditional hymns, and a "contemporary" service for those who prefer more modern music.

Worship isn't meant to be conformed to our liking.  Churches aren't to cater to the preferences of the congregation because you'll have many different preferences you'd have to appeal to.  

And then you have the churches separated by race.

Don't get me started on that.  I've known of folks who opposed certain ministries within their own church because that would mean there would be black people in the church.  I guess no one told them that Heaven was unsegregated.  A true Christian church will welcome Christians from any race.  God didn't reserve salvation for one group (of course, Orthodox Jews would disagree).  John 3:16 said that God so loved the WORLD.  He didn't put any restrictions on which race or people group would or wouldn't get salvation.  It's available to every race, tribe, and nation.  That's what WORLD means in that verse.

I'm tired of all the labels and all the separating of groups whether it's done by gender, race, age, or preferences.  The Church is supposed to be different from the world, not conform to its practices.  If the Church were to drop all labels and come together in one accord (there's a car joke in there somewhere), the world would see that we ARE different instead of mocking us saying we're no different than they are.