A man argued with me thirty minutes that it is wrongs to debate.

A lady told me that it doesnt make any difference what a man believes, and then tried to enroll me in a program to fight Communism.

Some parents told me that they liked to let their children make up their own minds about going to church service, but whipped them because they didn't want to go to school.

A member argued with his neighbor that the church of Christ is right because it observes the Lord's Supper every Sunday, but he missed the next Sunday himself and went fishing.

A family, figuring income tax, showed a 10% deduction as contribution to the church, and when the collection plate came around on Sunday they dropped in a total of one dollar and a dime.

A man, opening a fresh pack of cigarettes, explained to me that he didn't have money to buy his mother some badly needed medicine.

An individual griped because the sermon was so long, then went out in the cold the next night and spent two and one half hour on the hard bleachers watching a ball game.

A member didn't come to services Sunday morning because it looked like rain, and then waded out to his neck in ice water the next morning before dawn duck hunting.

A lady stayed at home Sunday morning with a pain in her left ear, and went to work early Monday morning with a pain in both ears.

The whole family had to stay at home with the sick child on Sunday, then left the child alone and went their respective ways on Monday morning.

A member gossips to the preacher's back about the preacher not having the "spirit of Christ."

Some members want the WHOLE gospel preached until you start preaching on church cooperation, the work of the church, and all-sufficiency of the local congregation, the evils of the social gospel, the danger of the pastor system, the importance of speaking as the oracles of God, the un-scripturalness of man-made religious fraternities, the importance of giving as prospered, worldliness, discipline, bringing up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Oh yes, and steer clear of the marriage question. What's left to preach to the members of the church! Why, BAPTISM, of course. I've never seen a "baptism Christian" yet whose religion didn't remind me of WATER -- weak, shallow, and stagnated.

People resent the preacher trying to tell them how to run their business or office, but at the same time try to tell the preacher how to run his.

Let us all practice what we preach (Romans 2:1).

TRUTH MAGAZINE XIII: 2, p. 14
November 1968