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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I think God wants us to believe Him and accept His son. A Christian church should teach the faith, not encourage people to go wandering off in any direction. It's hard enough to get people in the door in the first place.
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And it's going to get harder. People are leaving fundamental Christian churches and for good reason.  I am a Church Administrator in a progressive Christian church.  Our new members' classes are literally doubling in size every time we offer them.  Most of the new members are coming from the Southern Baptist and Catholic churches (nothing against the Catholics.  I love the direction the Catholic Church seems to be taking!).  Millennials especially are sick of divisive, exclusionary places of worship.  They value diversity and acceptance.  They want to be in a place where spiritual exploration and questioning are encouraged.  They want a variety of classes and workshops that feed their mind and their body.  They don't need to be told that one path is the "right" one and everyone else is destined for hell.  That's not the loving God (Goddess, Creator, Universal Good, Allah, I Am, Spirit...whatever) they have grown to know.

And most of all - They have outgrown fears of eternal damnation for daring to question.  God is bigger than that.  He doesn't need to hold the threat of hell over people's heads in order to get them to listen to Him.[/quote]
You work in a Christian church, and you don't even know what to call God?[/quote]

I work in a Christian church that acknowledges that people have many names for God.  It's all the same God.  Have you read the Bible?  El, Yahweh, Father, Jehovah, Holy Spirit,  Abba, Kyrios, ...to name just a very few.  Do you think God, the loving Creator of all that is, gives a damn how we use our vocal chords to pronounce His name?  Seriously?  You don't think God is a little above a combination of letters?  Maybe He's a little bigger than language?  Allah is the God that Abraham knew.   I could call him %$#@* and it would still be God.

That's what I mean by spiritually immature.  At some point you outgrow the need to put "God" on a throne with a white beard and a book with a naughty list.  God is the loving source of all that is.  You could replace "God" with any name and it wouldn't change the nature of God.[/quote]

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