Soloist wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 9:07 pm
Judas Maccabeus wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 8:40 pm
Like they suddenly found a roofing job just in the vicinity of his home that they could do on Good Friday? Really? And they bent their schedule just so they could offend him? I do not buy it.
As I pointed out, I only have one side. I see no reason to say he’s lying.
Sooner or later, probably sooner, a member of a church must know that he cannot force his preference on a body where there are an agreed set of standards. If you are a member of a community, sometimes you need put your preference aside.
Believe what you like, but my suspicion is he wanted the church to bend to his will. If you cannot accept the churches values and standards, you simply should not join. When I was on the cusp of joining my current church, a brother that frequents this board exhorted me not to suggest any changes until I had been a member for at least 5 years, otherwise I likely would be rebuffed because I simply would not be thought to understand the why of the standards in place. I feel that was good advice.
He hasn’t said he’s trying to change anything and he obviously left and went back to the Catholics.
If it was because he was trying to change things then he probably made up his mind that was going to go nowhere.
But if it was something along like what he said, then I would say the church was in the wrong.
I basically exactly spelled out what I thought of the situation which nothing you just wrote here with the exception of suggesting he’s lying disagrees with what I said, does it?
If you don’t seek to protect the weaker brother from his faults and insist it’s his job to fix himself, then the Mennonites have no business telling people not to drink. Or to follow any other standards for that matter.
Working on that day was consistent with the standards that presumably all had agreed to. Including him.
He did not like it, it offended his sensibilities, tried to get it changed, but the body did not see any value in changing their standards to accommodate him. If you are going to be a member of a Mennonite church, sometimes you must lay aside your personal preferences and submit to the consensus of the congregation.
We had a seeker that was looking for a far more “Catholic “ type service than we would feel comfortable with. We did try to make the space look less like the school it is. But you can only go so far without changing what you fundamentally are. Do you force the entire church to accept a “smells and bells” service that surely would be alien to their sensibilities, or tell this person “no, this is what we are, you are welcome to join us, but this is what we are”?
Do you force the entire congregation to adopt rules that do not resonate with their understanding of the Scriptures, or do you say, “no, this is how we as a community have decided to handle this issue.” I will tell you, if you altered things for every seeker’s sensibility, the congregation would get dizzy.
Frankly, the idea of a company scheduling jobs just to tweak his nose simply does not pass the plausibility test. I grew up in the furniture reupholstey business. It is hard enough to run a business, to say that someone scheduled work just so he could see it does not fit with what it takes to run a businesses. Now if the guy said sarcastically “we did it just for you” after he complained, yes, that brother needs to check his attitude. But if this guy is perceived as wanting his Eastern church to follow Catholic rules, that is a non starter.
I would be even more against it if I perceived it as introducing the relics of Papism. It is an evil system, period.
