Are You Comfortable With That?

I was talking with someone this week who conveyed to me that there was a family who had told them that they had not been going to church or supporting their church because they were mad at their pastor for not coming by to visit them. I'm not going to go into all of the detail here for time's sake as well as privacy, but I will share this. I asked this person if those who were upset had contacted their pastor and indicated that they'd like to have a visit. As I told her, it's just a fact that in this day and age, most people really do not want pastoral visits anymore, and unless people ask for me to visit, I generally do not. She said she did not think they had, and that she'd ask them. I then asked if she thought the people had a good reason for not going to church and for withholding their giving to their church. She said she had not thought about it before, so I told her to think about that and then act on it. I told her that if she felt it was scripturally wrong for them to act the way they are then as their friends and sister in Christ, she owed it to them to confront them on it. I could tell she did not like that, but it is, in fact, her responsibility to correct error where she see's it in those she loves.  

I left her with a final thought and a method with which to bring about correction. I suggested that she ask her friends if they thought they would be comfortable standing before God on judgment day and claim that they felt justified in laying out of church for an extended time and withholding their giving because they were angry.  She said, "I can't ask them that! They'll be mad at me next!"  So I said, "so you think they are wrong for what they are doing then?" She said, "Of course they are!" She got real quiet after saying that and said, "Guess I've been wrong too."