Looking for a change... just not here

*Warning: This will be a long ranting post, but hopefully it will be worth the read*

I will officially be a college graduate in four days. In four months, I will begin my classes for my masters. This is a huge change for me, and I have decided to make some other changes in my life as well... start with a clean slate so to speak. Within the next month, I will get a membership to the local YMCA and start working out (and crossing my fingers to fit back into my jeans from high school...). Another change to be made is that I have started going back to church.

Friend H and I went to a church last Sunday that I had never been to. I am very picky about church, and I want to make sure the church has its priorities straight. I get so sick of big churches that are more wrapped around getting bigger than focusing on God. I had a couple of issues with this church, but the main "piss-me-off factor" was actually a woman there. When she found out that friend H didn't have a home church, she made it her job to get H to join. After the sermon, the church had an opportunity for people to become a member (This bothered me too, pretty much for the same reason I'm going to explain in a minute). She held our hands, and started telling H that she could walk out the door and drop dead, and would then spend an eternity in Hell if she didn't go up to the front. While there may be truth in that statement, you don't try to convince someone to make a decision by scaring the crap out of them. She kept saying that she didn't want to have H's blood on her hands. I told H that if she wasn't ready it was fine. After all, a decision like that won't mean anything if you aren't fully into it. The woman looked at her and said "do you think when a woman is pregnant she can just tell that baby that I'm not ready for you and the baby will just wait it out? No, it's going to come anyway" The nerve!

The worst part was that she was mixing being saved with being a member of that church. The two should go hand in hand, but they don't. You can go to church and not be saved, and you can be saved and not go to church. Being a Christian is not about what church you are a member of... it's about your relationship with Jesus. I can't believe this woman did that to poor H. All of her attempts at getting her to join did the exact opposite. As we walked out we both looked at each other and knew we were never going back there for fear of running into that woman again. We are going to try another church this weekend, and if that doesn't work we will make the commute back to my home church in Frankfort. Wish us luck...