Denominations

So recently I have been going through some stuff with people wondering why a Baptist is attending a Methodist church. I was accused of not changing my views to the Methodist church. I am an extremely open minded person and never had I one understood the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist. I actually had a conversation the other day with a kid I well respected and I consider him my best friend and we'll go by first names so his name was Chris. According to him I was not being an open minded person and accepting Methodist views even though it has been a year. He was asking me all these questions and telling me the major differences between the two denominations. I have attended the church for like I said about a year now and I had never noticed any major differences. I considered this a good thing in my opinion. It never crossed my mind that it would be a bad thing or cause such a big fuss. One argument unleashed all my anger. While I have attended it was amazing to me to see how little the churches actually know about each other. I constantly heard this group bash on the Baptists about how they think they are better than everyone and how they don't dance. Not once in my 14 years attending a Baptist church was I ever taught these things. Nobody ever said anything. I actually had a conversation with one of the leaders of the church and he said that it was not emphasized in the church and that it actually was growing uncommon for churches to emphasise it. This is upsetting to me and leads me to ask why? Why do we judge different denominations based on what we think we know. Yet if we we're to attend the church for say 2 months and actually saw how they did things maybe just maybe we'd actually be able to call ourselves as one group of CHRISTIANS and not be separated by our denominations. I'm not saying that denominations are bad, nor am I saying that the Baptists are the best because like other denominations there are things I don't always agree with. I'm saying why don't we look past the differences to what really matters.

I once saw a person of a different denomination come into our Baptist church back when I was still there. Now one of my fellow youth members started hounding him about being from a different denomination. What I saw and heard next will live with me till I die. One of my youth ministers came up to the boy that was hounding the other kid and told him to be quiet for a minute. The look on the visitors face was sheer terror. He must of thought that now an adult was going to get on it. The youth minister stuck out his hand and introduced himself and they shook hands. Now here was his one-liner "I don't care what church you come from, I don't care if you come here for years but still stay another member of another church, I am more thrilled to have you here, learning about God at my church. Sure I'm going to wonder why you haven't joined the church after a few years of coming here, but I'm more thrilled that you chose to attend this church on Sundays." The little boy was so shocked by that it must of been his reason to keep coming. I was asked to friend the boy for the day and show him around. I will never forget those words. How wrong is it for us as Christians to judge different Christians because they have a few MINOR differences. How are we to help others come into faith with Jesus, if we can't even keep a Jesus mindset of our own.

This is my promise to anybody who one day attends my church. I don't care what background you've come from, it doesn't matter what denomination you are from. I am more pleased to have you attending my church and listening to me speak and giving me your time than anything else. Well that is all I got. Hopefully you guys will like it and maybe it will even plant a seed in your head.

~Remember there is only 1Way2Live and that's for....Christ!~