Prayer meeting story

[Joseph]

In the church I was in there were two people who have a prayer meeting at there home independent of the church, every week they invited anyone who wanted to attend, including all the leadership. They had about 40 people coming for a over a year, a mixture of people mostly from the outside but had about 25% from our church, and people were getting blessed. The leadership never once attended this meeting but they took him in the office and told him that he wasn't allowed to have anyone to the meeting that attended the church. He then called me to ask me what I thought and I told him their nuts, they have no right telling him who he can have over his house, so he continued. The following week they brought him in the office again only to tell him that he has to end the meetings all together because he wasn't qualified to hold a prayer meeting. He called me again and I said to keep your head down and keep going, ignore them. So they then told him that him and his wife have to leave the church, but also went to his daughter (who was in her early twenties) and convinced her to stay and explained to her that they needed mental help and counseling (and brought division, division is a whole other post for me), then they started to discredit them to other people. He caught wind of what they were saying and went in and told three of them of in the church office, including the pastor, right before the end of the meeting pastor got in his face and he, my friend, yelled at the pastor, "GET YE BEHIND ME SATAN"!!!!
That was great, I so wish I could have seen that, he said he had a look of shock on his face and fell back in his chair and didn't say another word, end of meeting. The reality is that the church has been trying for over two years to start cell groups at the elders homes, but have been unsuccessful to this day, nobody comes because there is no substance, and my friends meetings are still going strong. Other good news, there daughter, after a year, is finally leaving the church too. She finally sees what has happened.

Joe

[truth]

That happened all the time at my church, too.....there was a Saturday overcomers meeting held at the church that was just wonderful - and you really felt the presence of God when you went to it but the guy who was leading it moved out of town and a young pastor and his wife took it over....

Immediately, of course, the wife had all types of criticism of the meeting, went and got a "curriculum" to follow and started to change everything ....and one year later - to date- the group had completely disbanded and people quit coming!

There was something about that church that they never could leave things alone!
They always had to get involved in everythiing and basically screw it up!

I guess they felt they weren't doing enough if they weren't constantly "tinkering" with everythiing --- and usually it didn't get any better it got worse or completely fell apart! But it gives them some type of false security of being in control.

The senior pastor periodically would say on a Sunday - "God's correcting me - I've only been studying 5,000 hours this week and He wants 10,000 hours!" then he would like drop to the ground and sort of repent and everyone would clap (of course, I never did - I couldn't stand that kind of talk)

oh, by the way your friend could have also used on them(they used to say this all the time) God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called!!!) After all, the greatest heroes and heroines of the Bible were unqualified when they were called --- so there Pastor!

truth