Youth groups should never send teens off to University being experts in pizza and dodgeball while remaining novices at understanding the Bible and living on mission.
Focus on the right things.
If you love Jesus you should love what Jesus loves, and that ultimately means you should be an official, active, and serving member of your local church (Eph. 5:25).
Church membership should be normal for Christians. Lives lived in regular accountability demonstrate the gospel’s reality to the world, particularly through the mutual love that Jesus identified as the mark of his followers. This is both biblical and strengthens evangelistic witness. Weaker and newer Christians gain feeding and accountability through membership, and mature and seasoned believers demonstrate authentic Christian living.
Hebrews calls believers to “consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works,” explicitly warning against forsaking assembly “as the manner of some is” (Heb. 10:24–25). This suggests participation isn’t optional but essential to spiritual health.
Church membership preserves biblical truth by establishing who bears responsibility for rooting out false teaching and protecting the gospel when leadership itself becomes compromised. Paul’s letter to the Galatians exemplifies this. I say this as a positional elder in my church — Paul appealed to the whole congregation rather than leadership alone to address doctrinal corruption. Think about it: how are you to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2), which positions mutual care as a central Christian obligation, if you’re not actively in a membership role? Thessalonians similarly exhorts believers to “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thess 5:11), framing encouragement as a reciprocal responsibility that requires presence and investment.
Healthy membership equips believers to recognize heresy when taught or communicated and transforms them from passive consumers into active defenders of the faith.
Acts depicts the early church persevering in apostolic teaching, communion, and gathering daily, with believers holding possessions in common (Acts 2:42–47), a portrait of intensive communal engagement rather than individual isolated devotion or nominal affiliation.
Ultimately, practicing membership glorifies God as Christians gather to form his body, living under the life giving words of scripture, fellowshipping with one another sacrificially, and reflecting his character.
Mormons are often very personally offended when Christians say that Mormonism isn’t Christian. This is dumb.
Joseph Smith’s first “encounter” with God involves God telling Smith that every creed Christians profess is an abomination to God.
Every creed.
That includes the Nicene Creed. They reject who God is, who Jesus is, the nature of salvation, the nature of exaltation, the clear teaching of Scripture, etc..
Mormonism rejects the very core of the Christian faith in all its essentials. Joseph Smith knew this but nowadays they are playing mind games with their own people and with real Christians.
Either THEY are Christians or WE are. It’s one or the other. Not both.
When asked “Will all be damned but Mormons?” Smith replied, “Yes, and a great portion of them unless they repent and work righteousness” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 119)
The Doctrine and Covenants (1:30) leaves no doubt to the Mormon teaching of exclusivity when it says the LDS Church is “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased ….”
Brigham Young, second only to Joseph Smith in Mormonism said…
“Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity” (Journal of Discourses 10:230).
“The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God” (Journal of Discourses 8:171).
I could easily give you pages of them saying they are the only true Christians and how we are all ignorant beasts and our doctrines are wrong. They knew at the time they had a different God, gospel, Scripture, and system of belief. But now it has become expedient to pretend otherwise while still preaching all those false and unchristian things.
Mormons, your leaders are gaslighting you and you are gaslighting us. You aren’t Christian but we want you to be. Flee from Mormonism. Flee from Joseph Smith.
I'm often asked why -- given my study in both the Bible and church history -- I am not Roman Catholic. I recently sat down in front of my camera and outlined some of why that is.
https://t.co/znaCoUysmy