How can we judge?

As a Christian and a Baptist, I was very disturbed by your editorial, “On Joining a Church,” in the Sept. 4 edition of The Alabama Baptist. One part reads:

“No Baptist church wants such members. The gospel is too important for such trivia. The eternal destiny of a human soul is in the balance. Churches want members who have established a personal relationship with God through faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross.”

This is disturbing on so many levels.

First of all, isn’t the church the place where most people find and form a relationship with Christ?

To turn anyone away speaks of prejudice and self-righteousness. Who are we to judge one’s motives?

And if “these people” come into our churches, isn’t it our mission to “walk the walk and talk the talk” and welcome them, encourage them and pray for them?

How many “members” do you think are in the church pews every Sunday who do not really live the Christian life?
How many come to church for the political, business and social benefits?

They oftentimes contribute much to the church coffers, but would you turn them away?

A church should welcome every one of God’s children; otherwise you might as well consider the church a “club” and charge membership dues.

If Christ had this attitude, what would have happened to Mary Magdalene, Peter, the woman at the well, Saul and every one of us who has “sinned and come short of the glory of God?”

And while the woman you mentioned in your editorial was not forthcoming in joining a church to get a “bargain” on wedding costs, rather than begrudge and judge her, why not encourage her and her family to participate in Bible study, choir, Sunday School and “minister” to them?

By the church’s attitude, they may never influence her and her family to see the church as more than a social club because obviously that is how the church looked at it.

Carole Tindoll Weldon
Montgomery, Ala.