No, sorry if I was implying Ploughboy but I was just going by what you had posted about fellow Lutherans and fellow Methodists in what they would say of you.
The Lutherans for starters and tragically enough, I was visiting a Methodist church that did communion in that manner. I had abstained from that communion. Could not believed at the time that they would carry on Catholic traditions being a Protestant church and all, but later on I had discovered that Martin Luther did not prune away all things that are the dead works of Catholicism, and he should have.
Anyway, I am glad that you do not take communion like that, but you may want to ask questions the next time you take communion with Methodists or Lutherans and/or listen to how they take communion for them.
My Presbyterian church used to start communion service with "We come into His Presence today..." and I never thought once about it but it hit me since Catholics were known to visit the church that they probably do not see how we take communion any different than they do when that former church started communion off like that; and they did called it "holy" communion too. So I did not take communion then either. Eventually I dropped membership with the Presbytery and left the church wen they became the center for Promise Keepers' movement in the valley and as much as I did tried to warn them, with so many Freemason members in the church, I can see why they swept that under the rug also .
There is no getting the truth out in a church run by red tape that prohibits the time to address major issues of faith. Keeping members was more important than keeping the faith and so I had left.
Thanks for sharing.
The Methodist church that I belong to is the United Methodist Church.
Obviously not only Methodist will be in heaven, and obviously Methodist don't have all the truth.
Denominations are in interesting thing.
Pros and Cons my friend.
The Cons is that they will often follow tradition and be slow to change if they are doing something wrong.
The Pro however is that having a sound belief that has been stable for generations helps protect against
being deceived in certain ways.
For example, many many cults that start up, like the Jim Jones where they are drinking the KoolAid waiting for the spaceship,
are often non-denominational in the sense of being connected to a historical church. Therefore they have
less accountability, they are often doing something "NEW" and often leads them to stray from the tried and test true path.
Denominations also provides some type of standardization and template for setting up the church, you don't have to
reinvent the wheel every time. For example, many will talk about Pastors who get paid alot and drive expensive cars.
Well, that is not in the United Methodist Church because we have set standards governing, how much pastor is paid
and it is more likely in the nondenominational churches, where they can set their own salaries and without the accountability
of tradition, they have more freedom to do things their own way, and more room to stray into error.
However, denominations have issues as well. They sometimes can make an idol out of their belief and often
times when something they believe is wrong, it is difficult to get them to see outside of that.
So just for church education, one difference for example between the Baptist Church and the United Methodist Church
is that the Baptist church is locally controlled, there may be various Baptist conventions and conferences, but each
Baptism church is operated under the power of the local members (Pastor, trustees, etc). However with the United Methodist
the power is held more at the conference level, not with the Pastor. United Methodist Pastors are assigned to a church
by the conference (whereas Baptist for example, the members choose their pastor). For the UMC has what we call
the Itinerant system in which Pastors are moved around from church to church perhaps every 5 years or so . This
was modeled after John Wesley who would travel to different churches. The logic is so that the congregation doesn't
focus solely on serving the Pastor but God, and the Pastors can be moved to different churches and spread their gifts .
One pastor might have a gift of finances and another a gift of administration. And by moving both around you allow each
church an opportunity to benefit from the gifts of those pastors, you empower the lay members to have greater power in the
church since pastors are not assigned permanently, and you allow things to less likely be stuck/stale, such as we've always done it this way.
Yea denominations are interesting, pros and cons. However I will say that sometimes those who run away from the church body
because of the cons of denominations, often end up being lone sheep Christians. Thinking they can just study the word by
themselves, and end up having no one to encourage and uplift, and no one they are accountable to, and no where
to use their gifts for the body of Christ.
