My Response to St. Matthews Church

This is a letter that I am sending to St. Matthews Church, they send out these "payer rugs" and flyers all over the country, if you are not familiar with them they have a webiste that might explain it if interested, www.aboutsaintmatthewschurches.com


It seems to me that many churches don’t consider the negative impact that their actions can have on pushing people further away from Jesus.

God’s will is not for everyone to be wealthy and all of our problems fixed. Many times our problems are our stepping stones to faith and learning to trust Jesus as we walk through them, not just having them miraculously fixed. You are much better off encouraging people to seek God’s own Son to help them by reading The Bible and learning about and accepting what Jesus did for them. Only to the true God can He step into our lies of sin and work on them. God cannot interact with sin that has not been dealt with by that person covering themselves with Jesus’ blood; therefore He can not answer prayers of someone who does not pray in Jesus name just because they have a rug. Encourage them to seek God, not just fixes to their problems.

I am not a Bible scholar, but I am familiar with much of Scripture and I am wondering where you are pulling much of this from. You seem to be deceiving people that this is some magic formula to get God’s help, how ridiculous and even more, how dangerous. You don’t even know who is getting this letter and rug, what kind of people that don’t know anything of the Messiah will think this piece of paper with Jesus picture has some Holy power and they can get some money or something from God despite never giving any bit of their life to God.

And what about the people that chose to believe that this will work and God will bless them? But nothing happens because it is not God’s will for this person’s life right now. (We are called to pray according to His will). Will they be pushed even further away from God and not believe He exist because He didn’t answer the prayer. When they should only be upset at your misleading and trickery.

The exact steps in your letter (i.e. both knees, place it in the Bible, the exact timing of everything) what an appalling disregard for the simplicity of accepting Jesus’ sacrifice to save us and change everything from the inside out. Instead of letting people know that it’s okay that they don’t have a Bible, you should encourage them to read it. Maybe provide some good versus to start with if it’s their first time. Perhaps you also should pick up your Bibles there at the Church and read them. People are much better seeking help from the Word of God that has existed from the beginning of time, than a 59 year old church.

All of this I say because if you and I are brothers then we are accountable to speak truth in love to each other for the sake of the Gospel.