No!

That is the short answer.

Here is the long answer…

The Lord’s desire is that we be one in mind and spirit etc. But we are splintered, very splintered. You can go down the main street of any city or town and see different buildings that claim to house the ‘church’. Or even buildings that claim that they are the church.

Buildings are not the church. People redeemed and called out from the world are the Church.

Billy Graham once said that on any particular Sunday 75% of attendees in a church building are not saved. That is a very sad statistic. Maybe they think that going to a church makes somebody a Christian. That is a false belief.

Reading and knowing the Bible doesn’t even make you a Christian. Doing good works does not make a person a Christian, although good works does show that you are a Christian, but it does not make you a Christian.

Only faith in Jesus and acknowledging that God raised Jesus from the dead, puts you in the company of those being saved. And therefore by your confession of faith in Jesus you are added to the church by God.

Please note this, you cannot add yourself to the church. It’s impossible. Some Churches have classes that they require for you in order to become a member of the church. That is a false notion. God adds to the Church, nobody else.

A good friend of mine told me that pastors like to have big attendance in their churches In order to brag to other pastors that they have the bigger Church. Membership drives are to make people obligated to that particular church building. Can you see how wicked and evil this is?

Wouldn’t it be better if pastors actually built the church up to do ministry? After all that’s what the calling of pastor is all about. It’s about building up the church for ministry. The way modern-day pastors are operating, you’d think that they are looking for job security.

Christ is not divided. His Church should not be divided.

Somebody once told me that pastors want you to join their church so they can own your wallet. How sad is this? They even take an Old Testament law of tithing and bind it on Believers in Christ so that they can compel you to give them 10% of your income. You will notice if you look at these Church budgets that they give relatively little to the poor. Contrast that to the early Church in Acts. There was no budget, no building, no clergy. The Believers in Jesus gave to each other to meet needs and to missionaries out on the mission field. Men called to pastor were not paid to sit in an office and write books. If anyone was called to pastor or shepherd a group of believers, they were bi-vocational, if even that. They would make a living just like everybody else.

So, am I trying to start a church? No. The church has already been started. The church was started by Jesus about 2,000 years ago. We don’t need any more man-made churches. Modern-day concepts of what church is or what pastors are should be discarded in preference to how the Bible describes what these things should be. Anything beyond this is just men adding to the Word.