[SERay]

Tracea, I relate to what you are saying completely. Pastor David Wilkerson of Times Square Church in New York (one of the real fellowships worthy of attending) commented recently that his mail box is full of people crying out for solid biblical teachings from genuine churches. Scriptures mentions that in the last days there will be a famine of truth, that people will seek everywhere for genuine Spirit breathed hope and counsel. I feel we are in that time. An organization completed a census on church growth in 2005 and found that the number of new conversions were in the 2% range, that the majority of the growth were mega-churches who were merely attracting people from smaller churches. The church is not growing, it is merely gestating from trends and fickle church shoppers. The church as a whole today is dead. There I said it, "dead". There are remnants here and there that keep the flame fanned, but they are hard to find. The remnants are usually small groups, who in themselves fear revealing themselves whereas they do not want to loose the power of the Holy Spirit by inception of lukewarm believers. Harsh? I don't think so, just being real. It's going to get worse unless something supernatural takes place. A positive change usually requires a large scale disaster which equals desperation which results in prayer that yields a revival.