where is the real church of God?

[Distracto]

Thank you all for your replies. I feel sad to say that i have ruled out the Orthodox churches early on.

[No*s]

Why did you rule us out?

[michel]

(From the heart) Quote :-[I can't say I have the answers you are looking for but I feel the heart of the real church is inside people]

Distracto,
I would go further than 'FromtheHeart' - I would say 'Inside you'.
The more people you ask for advice, the more confused you will become (At least that is what I have found); unless you have been brought up in a particular faith, and are happy with that faith, look deep inside yourself for the answer, and at others around you who you feel 'happy with'.
By all means, read all that you can about every faith; you might surprise yourself by coming to the conclusion that they all accept the same basic principles.
Enjoy your quest!

[Andra130]

Distracto-
I can completely empathize with your predicament having been searching for God and or religion for the last 9 years or so. I myself have taken the position of Agnosticism because it just seemed impossible that any one individual "church" could have all the answers. I was raised Mormon and so this has been a particularly difficult thing for me to do. Mormons adamantly believe that their church is the true church and to turn from it is to turn from God. Although my search has not yet ended I can only suggest that you broaden your horizons even further. I myself have looked a little more closely into Eastern religions and ways of life than into Islam etc and I find many dictums of knowledge and insight that I could have found no where else. I guess what I am trying to say that perhaps it is not the culmination of knowledge that we need but the journey to it. Why else would such a fabulous web-site such as this exist except to assist us in that journey?

[Basil]

I was attending a charismatic university when I began a similar search. After taking a course in church history I immediately saw a discrepancy between early church worship and belief and what I had seen in the protestant churches I had attended (Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, and pentecostal/charismatic). I figured that if anyone had departed from the church as it was established by Christ (the way He intended it to be) it was our modern denominations. I explored the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches, which were closer to what I had experienced, but later discovered Orthodoxy, by God's grace, and after another year was received into the Church Holy Saturday 1994.

I truly believe that the Orthodox Church has uniquely preserved the apostolic teachings handed down from Christ. It's doctrines have never changed, or succombed to heresy, innovation, or modernization. This is important, because we don't want to serve God on our terms, but to come to Him and worship Him in spirit and in truth. To find a denomination which tells us what we are comfortable with is nothing more than creating a god (or view of God) which satisfies us, rather than discovering who He truly is. Who is satisfied with that?

The Orthodox Church is structured much differently that what we see in the west, which can make it seem disorganized and chaotic, but I have seen that what unites all the different national Orthodox branches is the desire to preserve the apostolic teachings. We are united in belief and worship. This is much better than looking to some hierarchical structure for unity.

Basil

[Halcyon]

I also spent several years searching for a religion that suited me, in the end i had amassed a fair bit of knowledge about many faiths, but they all seemed wrong to me.
Why? I figured out eventually that you cannot be told what to believe or what God really is and that is what many religions try and do. You have to find you're own path, look inside yourself for God, you will not satisfactorily find it anywhere else.
Seems to me that you don't realise that you are in fact on the right path, ignore other peoples opinions of you, only accept what you know to be true in your heart.

[Happy]

Try doing what i do take all the ideas from them that u believe and toss them into 1 big pile of ideas and keep no religion jsut a bunch of ideas. keep building on it and u may find something u like?

[Dr. Khan]

Originally Posted by Distracto

Thank you all for your replies. I feel sad to say that i have ruled out the Orthodox churches early on.

Good for you...ha ha... welcome. Ephesians 4:11 -16, as to what to look for.

[profet]

>>I am having a hard time finding anyone else who has a problem with finding a church. <<

Sounds very familiar. Both my wife (heavy Budhhist training) and I (atheist for years) had to search high and low for a Christian church that saw other religions as equally valid divine revelations to differant people rather than as competition to be scorned. We also wanted to find a church that saw itself as the beginning, rather than the end, of our spiritual journeys. We found our church suprisingly nearby in a local congregation of a very small but international church literally rightaround the corner from us at:

http://swedenborg.org/