Must Read!!!

Quick note: Before anyone decides to burn me at the stake as a heretic for talking about the church, please read this post and the link in their entirety. Thank you :)
Whoever is reading this blog, must read the post I linked below. Then, email that link to every other Christian you know. This is an issue that is very important to all that say they love Christ and His Church.
PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE POST!!!! At the bottom of the first page you will see a link that takes you to part two of the post. Please go there and read that one also.

Just yesterday Emily and I were talking about "church work". Anyone that knows me, knows that I was once a full time minister within the church. My loving wife consistently brings it up to see if that is something I am feeling a need to go back to at this point in my life. Yesterday, while "checking in" with my heart, she asked me if I was in a need to "do" church work. Very surprisingly, I looked at her and said, "I am not sure how much longer our 'church' has to it." (I know. I'm sure she wondered where that came from also) Now, I was not talking about our church that we are at present attending. I was talking about what I like to call the "Big C" church. And to clarify even more, I am talking the the "Big C" church in this country. The longer that I am out of "church work", the more my loving God is allowing me to learn about the culture and the people that live around me everyday. The more I learn, the more I see a large (and growing) amount of people that are dissatisfied with the "institutional" church. The more I learn, the more I see that there is going to have to be a fundamental shift in mindset about the "Church" in Christ-followers today. This shift, will be one that I believe will change the way we "do" church for next few generations, until the next shift must take place or our Lord comes back to takes us home. I could go on and on, but read the link below. (just click on the link below) Then, lets discuss this a little more. Leave a comment and lets make this an active conversation. Let me know what you think. I am actively inviting you to invite other people to this blog. If I can get enough people that are interested, I may even start an entirely different blog space for this one specific issue (that is how important I believe this topic is). If no one is interested, then I will continue to talk to myself about this very important issue. :) It is time for us to look beyond the question, what can we do to bring more people into our churches? It is time for us to say, what do we need to do as a church to go out to the people? God Bless you and Keep Looking Up!

The Title of the post is:
They Love the Church but Not the Institution
Have we confused the community of God’s people with the structures that support it?

This is a very well thought out article. Please read and if God leads you to pass it on, please do.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/03/they_love_the_c.html

P.S. I was looking for pictures of churches when I happened across the one I used at this website http://amandalara.blogspot.com - I had to recognize this photographer because I took a look at her stuff on this site and her flickr (which there is a link to on her blog) site - she is really good