Traditions
The other problem that we face is dealing with traditions, the traditions of man, traditional religion.
In the very first church that I pastored there was an old sister who had come out of a mainline traditional denomination. She had become saved and filled with the Spirit and had moved now into a more charismatic group. But she brought with her, her traditions. And I used to battle with her.
Every time I tried to share or minister she would say, "No, but in the church that I come from, they didn't do it that way."
There was no such thing as official membership in the church, and she was saying, "I don't want to join this church unless I can be an official member. I want to feel secure."
There was a pressure on me to conform, to try and make everybody happy, to try and do it the way people wanted it to be.
And you know there are people out there, when you ask them what church they belong to they say, "I'm a Baptist." Most of them will say, "I'm a Catholic."
People want to belong. Sometimes they have grown up or they have had parents who were in a particular mainline denomination like that, and it is bred into them.
"My father was a Baptist, and his father was a Baptist, and his father before him was a Baptist, therefore I will be a Baptist too. If I get filled with the Spirit, I call myself a Charismatic Baptist, but I'm still a Baptist."
We like to stick to our titles. We like to stick to those emblems that we hang onto. It is traditional religion. It is just the same in the world isn't it? People have a boast in their country, in their state, in the school they went to, in the college that they went to. There is always something we have to hang onto, something we can make our boast in. The Body of Christ cannot be the same as the world. This cannot be our boast.