Rod's Page

I remember back ten years ago when Ron Dart said that many people in the church said that there just was a pervasive feeling that something, was wrong with the church. Could it be the tendency of some people to wrongly come to the conclusion that they should become a clergyman and that that should be thier ultimate service to God and man? The concept that religion is one man talking and many listening is promoted and what many see week after week when they go to "services" instead of meetings. We see one man talking and everyone else passive so the one man talking seems to be the most admired. One of the great deficits in what I call clergyman-ism is the substitute for friends. The clergyman is too busy for friends, too busy to talk on the phone or to go fishing. Unless it's for a more important clergyman or as a kind of good deed. When a person decides to become a clergyman he starts dressing as a clergyman, he talks like a clergyman and he internalises that he is a clergyman and he becomes a clergyman first. The Concept of friendship for other Christians is not very important for the clergyman. But it is to God. Abraham is described as a friend to God. We are told that the concept that there is no higher form of friendship then to die for another. We are told that Christ hates the Nickelodeon's the only place where the root word "layman" occurs in the bible to my knowledge. Nicolaitanism means ruling over the people a definition that clergymen hate also. Could it have been that it was Christ's love for his brothers as well as his Father was a help to him in his suffering and helped him on the cross? Could it be that Christ needed brotherly love in order to make this ultimate sacrifice? We are told by Christ to love the brethern right up before he was taken awayCould it be that many in church need friends instead of a clergyman? Should we who have adopted this concept of being a clergyman repent and instead strive to be a good friend to God and man?-Rod