There are so many things about the Catholic Church I disagree with and believe that they do not line up with the Word of God but with the Catholic Church and most other groups that name Jesus as Savour there are things that can be gleaned and learned from them. So often evangelical groups have such deep disagreements over doctrine in one area, and it can be a very major area, they will not look to a group for the good that they have and a model that is superior too much of church today in America. Since I have stepped back from pastoring and ministering several times a week God has given me time to reflect on my past failures or areas of weakness that I left unaddressed or virtually did not see. So in this post I would like to point out some of these practices of the Catholic Church that the Protestants could learn from.
I am only going to briefly go over these items but most of them great details and time could be given to each one of them.
CATECHISM
The first I want to discuss is Catechism. This type of teaching is not exclusive to Catholics but the Catholics have a well-known system and what it produces are Catholics for LIFE! There are several variations to this quote but it goes something like this, “Give me a child until seven and I will have them for life.” This quote has been used by many groups but what it says has a lot of truth. President Obama was raised in Islam and if you objectively observe his demeanor towards Muslims you will see he cuts them way to much slack and makes excuses for them though he claims to be a Christian today. The reason for President Obama’s behavior is most likely early childhood indoctrination. Much of American life in the past had such indoctrination through Vacation Bible Schools and weekly Sunday school meetings that virtually do not exist today and this lack of early Judeo/Christian values sown into young lives that lacks today has changed our country dramatically.
PRIESTHOOD
The Catholic Church within its ranks has great respect for its leadership which is mostly missing in the rest of the American church. Some of the movements I have been associated with almost promote chaos and lack of respect for leadership and commitment under the guise of “FREEDOM.” God always raised up leaders and anointed chosen individuals for special missions with special gifting and callings, this a true biblical pattern from cover to cover in the Bible. When Jesus feed the 5000 there were three groups of people, Jesus the leader, disciples a small number actively seeking to grow and go deeper and the multitude which most people were then and are today. Today in some circles people that are virtually part of the multitude and taking classes on the prophetic, healing, and other topics and being taught and claiming to be so anointed that they do not need a local church, a pastor/apostle in their life, and they are literally walking in rebellion but claiming to be walking in liberty and freedom. People today are so easily offended and literally walk out of churches daily disrespecting leadership. I am by no means claiming all leadership is perfect, trust they are not, but not submitting to leadership and being with them to support them in prayer, council, service, and finances only compounds the problems of the local church.
SPECIAL GUEST – SPECIAL OFFERING
I haven’t been too deep into the Catholic Church but to my knowledge it is a lot less common practice for special guest with special offering above and beyond tithing and this is very biblical practice unlike one of the most out of order issues in the protestant church. I am not saying that the Catholic Church uses its resources in a better and perfect way and just talking about compensation is carried out on a more even method than it is in the protestant church. In the protestant church, those that are very charismatic speakers get paid more, whether they are more biblical or not, it’s about the entertainment factor. If you carry a prophetic gift or a healing anointing you make more money whether you work hard or not. I don’t want to sound like a whiner but at The Father’s House I took huge steps of faith as God lead me to bring in very gifted speakers. When I did this I worked very long hours promoting, preparing, praying, and doing a lot of extra work with very long days working a secular job and staying up late nightly in special meetings to accommodate the speaker and the crowd. The end result was often hundreds of people blessed in prophetic words, healing, and or deliverance and the guest speaker had all expenses paid and walked away from about six hours of service time with several thousand dollars and I already told you want I got, extra hard work done by faith. If you can’t see that there is a problem with this picture you are blind. Remember Elisha would not take a gift and many other biblical figures did likewise, they lived off the tithe of the local people. This is one of the most serious problems in the church today.
Why are people doing this this way? Because it’s the way of the church, everyone else is doing, just not in the Bible.
EPHASIS ON JUST BEING A CATHOLIC
The Catholic Church is huge because people are born to a Catholic family baptized and put down on the score sheet as one more Catholic whether they ever come to the physical church again. There is a promotion of godly character in the Catholic Church but not in such a high pressure way in many protestant churches. The benefit is most people are retained as Catholics; this in combination with early childhood indoctrination there is great retention. Today in many protestant churches (I was guilty of this as well) we are trying to get everyone to be part of the mysterious five-fold ministry, (which really isn’t in the Bible) and the results is that people that should be part of the multitude can’t handle of the pressure being pushed toward something that they really are not called to do and they leave the church or move to a church where no pressure is put upon them. While in the Catholic Church you are desired to attend, be good, and give but not the same heavy pressure of a revival/renewal church or fundamentalist church would put on people.
This is some food for thought, especially for leaders. I did not directly quote a lot of scripture but I could back up everything I have put here with doctrinal passages and historical stories from the Bible. The church of revival will have the best qualities of all churches all in one.
Flagship Apostolic 
Posted on May 15, 2016
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