{"id":6558,"date":"2013-12-08T17:20:37","date_gmt":"2013-12-08T22:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allandouglas.dougbittinger.com\/blog\/?p=6558"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:40","slug":"two-three-gathered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/two-three-gathered\/","title":{"rendered":"TWO OR THREE GATHERED"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Calvin<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In our world today of religious conglomerates, church has become big business.\u00a0 As we observe the electronic churches with their television personalities taking in their millions, we are tempted to ask, Is God for sale? Have we packaged religion in neat, syrupy sermons and wrapped it in emotionally draining songs to give it consumer appeal?\u00a0 Have we resorted to the gimmicks of Wall Street rather than the Golgotha inspired sacrifices of the New Testament? Have we allowed the search for mammon to hinder our search for souls?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hopefully, these questions represent the extreme and the religious landscape is not what it appears.\u00a0 Surely the manufacturers of high-powered religious showmanship are sincere even though their product is sometimes shallow and misleading.\u00a0 Surely the people of God will become less gullible when they realize that para-church never becomes the full body of Christ.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It would certainly be unkind and unnecessary to discount any good from these hyper salespeople of religion.\u00a0 Yet, it would be devastating if that were all we had.\u00a0 We must never forsake the assembling of ourselves together as a body of believers to minister to one another in a humble, sincere and Godly way.\u00a0 There is something quite profound when two or three are gathered together in His name and God is present.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

     In our world today of religious conglomerates, church has become big business.  As we observe the electronic churches with their television personalities taking in their millions, we are tempted to ask, Is God for sale? Have we packaged religion in neat, syrupy sermons and wrapped it in emotionally draining songs to give it consumer … Continue reading “TWO OR THREE GATHERED”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[57],"class_list":["post-6558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matters-of-faith","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19141,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions\/19141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}