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The sense of community. The time to get together and meet like-minded people who may become lifelong friends. Some cities have larger groups and they get together for holidays or once a week when it's convenient for everyone or once a lunar month for the sake of doing so. It's not so hard to find people online, but there's so much discrimination against non-Christians that alot of us tend to keep to ourselves in our day to day life (I don't. I'm proud of who I am and I know I won't ever be a full first-class citizen in my own country unless we stop hiding who are and force the rest of society to give us a place at the table, but I understand the people who just want to live their lives without fighting for the right to live).
I like what you said earlier up about not throwing a book and saying "here's the instruction. do it.". I think that's the biggest complaint I've heard from my non-churchgoing Christian friends, that they felt that way when they were going to church or that there were people in the church hierarchy who were more interested in their own glory than their god's glory (though I think you'll find that in every religion that has ever existed). It seems to me, as an outsider, that one of the biggest problems with organized religions in general is that human nature takes over and some people try to use the organization for their own aggrandizement, which pretty much destroys its spiritual usefulness for the rest of the congregation. What do you do in your church to keep that from happening?
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