AN OPEN LETTER TO THOSE WHO DONT GO TO CHURCH

Dear fellow brothers and sisters,
I greet you as someone who is looking for meaning and happiness, as we all are. I know you are sincere or else you wouldn’t be reading this letter. I know this first of all: we miss you at church. There is not a Sunday goes by when your absence isn’t felt. You are missed. Join us.
Yes, I know this isn’t simple thing. The heart has its reasons. Some friend of mine told me that the church has her complexities that is why its difficult for him to walk regularly through the church door. Sometimes the church blocks God’s love as much as it reveals it. But how do we get past its dark side? The church has a long history both of grace and of sin and we who make up the church on earth don’t do God very well. Nobody does, we need to admit that.
I can only guess your reasons for not coming to church regularly or not coming to church at all: perhaps you have been hurt by the church, by the institution itself or by one of its priests or ministers. Perhaps you have been one of those who have experienced its callous, as insensitive, as denigrating you in some way. Perhaps you are intellectually disenchanted with the church, unable to secure its claims with your own sane grip on life and its mysteries. Perhaps you have found what you are looking for elsewhere, outside the doors of the church you attended when you were little. Or perhaps you have just drifted away and don’t feel a need for church in your life. Perhaps you are convinced that Jesus and his teaching are in fact tainted by the church, that Jesus never wanted to found a church, but wanted only that people take his teachings to heart and live in love and graciousness.
There are many reasons as to why people don’t go to church. I can only guess at yours. But your reason for not going to church is not important for this letter. I don’t want to defend the church here, make some kind of apologetics for it, or argue against any of the reasons that people give for not coming to church. And I don’t want to try to show you reasons why, I think, its important to go to church. This is not an apologetics, but a plea, an invitation.
Come back! Try us again! Or if you have never belonged to the church, try us, may be this time you will find life in the church and be able to drink in some of its graces. May you find it in you to forgive the church for its faults, see those faults are your own faults and see why Jesus picked such imperfect vehicle to carry on his presence? May be this time you will be able to see in the church what Jesus saw in it. Imperfect body made up of of men and women like you and me, full of sin, full of our selves, petty, small- hearted, less-than-sincere, miserly, and tainted, but also full of grace, full of Christ, big-hearted, sincere, generous, and pure, a group of men and women worth dying for and belonging to.
Come and be with us! A fellow pilgrim and a flawed church member

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Padre Joseph Nyamunga Mubiru
P.O.BOX 15318-00509
NAIROBI-KENYA
BLOG: http://nyamusus.blogspot.com
Mob. +254-722-585-329