more church neglect...

You have to wonder what is going on in our churches.

A while back our youth leader was let go from our church. I had confronted him a while back about his myspace site that he had. As I visited his site, I noticed that he had some inappropriate songs on there (the "F" word being prominently used in many of the songs!). At the top of his page he mentioned that he was a youth leader at our church. I sent him a friendly email just saying that he might want to remove the songs before he gets in trouble. He fired back that it was not my place to judge him. No matter what I said, it all came down to his saying I had no right to judge him. He would quote Scripture such as take the plank out of your own eye, and do not judge! I showed him how scripturally, he was wrong in his assessment of what I did. I showed him how the Bible says we should discern truth from error. We are to help our brothers and sisters. I showed him the compete scriptures that says to remove the plank from your own eye so you can help with the speck in the other person's eye. He came back filled with anger and hatred.

I did not need to say anything to anyone else. Obviously, someone else saw his site too and it came to the attention of the pastors of the church. He ended up putting a block on his site so no one except his "friends" could see it, not even the pastors. Just recently, an issue came up where the computer he was using was filled with pornography. He lived with an elderly couple in the church. They did an investigation and found over 45 pages worth of porn websites that he had visited. His response was that someone "set him up!"

He was given a chance to repent. He chose to call everyone in the church a liar. He was asked to step down from his position as youth leader. He sent text messages to all of the youth telling them to not go to our church and to our youth group meetings.

We just found out that he is now an assistant youth leader at a Nazarine Church in town. That church did not do a reference check on him before hiring him into this position. They have just gotten a man who feels it is okay to use the "F" word, it is okay to talk about sex openly with the kids (not in a biblical way) and to view pornography on the Internet.

Is it any wonder that our kids are lost when they graduate from high school?

What will it take for churches to finally look for biblical preachers and biblical leaders of the youth? There is much damage control that needs to be done within our own church since he has left. Praise God that we had 15 kids come back this past week! We are going to give them good old fashioned biblical teachings! They will learn what sin is and what the consequences are. At the same time, they will also learn about the love of God and "why" Jesus had to die on the cross.

Please keep our church in your prayers. There is some division that has occurred because of this. One of the pastor's has taken the hit for releasing this person from his position. Without divulging all of the details, he can only say that it had to be done. Please keep him in your prayers too!

Put your faith and trust in Jesus.
Repent of your sins and be obedient to His Word!
Go into all the world preaching the gospel to every creature!!