Torn Between Two Churches

Written by Warren |Posted on November 26, 2008 | Comments

How can we escape the fact that our church is passive and the one we just visited last Sunday is so alive? We promised ourselves that no matter what happens, we will still be attending our church in Manila because we were originally members there. But since we moved here in the province, it became less practical for us to travel to Manila every Sunday. Especially given the situation that we lacked financial resources.

In this new church that we are attending, and I hate comparing, aside from the qualified teaching pattern, we felt the warmth of the church members, we felt the activeness. So alive. So active. They were always looking out for opportunities to support missions. They were already supporting several missions.

And this evening I had the opportunity to share our burden to a fellow brother in this new church. I did mention that we are currently doing missions and have the desire to plant a church in our area if the Lord wills it. I also said that most of the time we felt so alone and would doubt God’s promise for us. Then before I mentioned that we needed support, He suddenly said without blinking his eye “why not have us help you, you might need support be it financially, or materials, or whatever that could support the growth of your ministry” I went like “what?” Hazel and I have been attending our church in Manila for almost a year now and been in this ministry for almost 6months and we’ve never heard anything like that phrase in our church!

Hazel also is beginning to love this new church. She says that she can find women that she can finally relate to unlike in our church in Manila. Most of the times we would come home from our church in Manila with tears because of lack of love from our members. I was beginning to think that a Christian is supposed to be cold and thus seeing a warm and loving brother would make me doubt his salvation. Like “aren’t you supposed to be cold if you claim you’re a Christian?” playing the silencer game of whom gets to be ignored in the church most wins.

It is so sad because Hazel and I came to love our church and treated it like our family. But because of their lack of support, interest, encouragements, we failed to see the reasons why we need to be in our church in Manila. Especially when we saw this new church. Like, why else should we be there if all we do is head knowledge and smile a little here and a little there? What for? We’ve been traveling for almost an hour every Sunday to get to our church in Manila and nobody, as in nobody, would even ask how our ministry is going. Whether it is still active or dead. Isn’t it that we’re supposed to be excited in these kinds of work? But sad to say, the church that we treated as our family never had that same passion.

But we don’t want to leave because of our beloved pastor who discipled us. He was like a father to us. And we learned a lot from him. And we have this unique respect and love for him.

We are torn between the two.

The church in Manila has the pastor we love. The church here in the province has the members we would love. Which way to go? I don’t know.

All I know is I want to grow. And so does Hazel. We wanted to surround ourselves with people who are committed to spreading the gospel. We want to be part of these workers. But upto now, we still couldn’t decide whether we would remain in our church in Manila or be part of the church here in the province which is more committed to missions. And we can’t deny the facts floating around our heads.