Wouldn’t it be better to put the questions and answers on a site that doesn’t mention the church of Christ?
Question:
I wish I were more articulate. What I am going to ask of you would sound better if I were able to explain all the reasons I ask but to make this short I will be incredibly blunt and trust God will give you the wisdom to understand.
In short ... I come from a family and live in a community that has great contempt for the church of Christ. Almost all of those I am associated with are 'faith only' and 'evangelical' and or "charismatic -tongues" . These family members and religious friends feel free to discuss their beliefs and are zealous. This often takes place in front of me. and there are times I am compelled to proffer a passage and ask, well, what do you do with this and or etc.
I have to be careful because animosity is very present. Most of them believe we are a 'cult' who harks back to Alexander Campbell. Their mind is very closed and I feel they are 'afraid' to read or listen to anything from a member of the church of Christ lest they are 'tricked' or led astray.
Anyway to shorten this ... whoever writes the Answer part of Q and A and expounded on the topics has done a bang up, outstanding job. I would love to email my family and friends the Q and A portion of your site and the portion that lists topics but I know the moment they see it is a "church of Christ" site they will not read it.
I said all that to ask this:
Will you consider and pray about making a "page' or whatever it is called that is composed of only the Q and A and topics and not identify that site/page as a " church of Christ" page/site.
I saw such a site once. Nothing identified it as any church. It just answered Q and A and had subjects. It turned out to be unscriptural in regard to 'faith only' and some other things but I really liked the fact that it appeared to be 'just bible' and not church-oriented. Not even the name of a person was shown. It was subject-oriented and not church-oriented and no part of the web address revealed anything. Only by reading the content did I discover it was not scriptural.
Anyway ... that is the best I can do to articulate what is in my heart so there it is.
If you should feel led to place your Q and A, topics, etc. in such a format please let me know so I can find it! Not being able to find it online easily would be the only drawback but it would give us a tool to use. Imagine a person putting in Bible questions and the search listing yours!
Answer:
Being the author of most of the answers given, I'm flattered by your praise, but I hope you will give me a moment of your time to explain why I'm not embarrassed to state that those teaching these things are from the churches of Christ.
First, you must realize that not everyone wants to hear the truth. It really doesn't matter where the source comes from. It is the truth that they don't want to hear. This is one of the points in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. "Then he said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.' Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead'" (Luke 16:27-31). What I am saying is that it doesn't matter if your friends knew you were from a church of Christ or not. If they don't want to accept the truth, they will find some excuse for not listening.
I find it funny that your Pentecostal friends reject the Bible teachings because the churches of Christ in this country in part trace the turning back to the Bible's teachings to Alexander Campbell around 1800. Pentecostalism has its roots in the early 1900s. It is this insincerity of argumentation that leads me to understand that the source doesn't matter. They just don't want to be shown that they are wrong from the Bible. Truth isn't established by who first realized we need to get back to Bible (and by the way Alexander Campbell wasn't the first -- he just happened to be more vocal). Truth is what is found in the Holy Scriptures.
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek" (Romans 1:16). Nor am I ashamed to say I am a Christian. Nor am I ashamed to say that I'm a member of Christ's church. My aim is to teach the truth to everyone who asks. "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil" (I Peter 3:15-17).
What more likely will happen (and has happened) is that people read the answers, realize that there are people who actually teach the Bible and live by it. They then seek out congregations in their area to learn if there are really such people near them. That would never happen if there was no way for a person to know who is presenting the information.
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God" (II Timothy 1:7-8).
