Karl Marx said ‘religion is the opiate of the masses’. Karl Marx said a lot of things. Many of them killed a whole lot of people in the end and are now considered pretty dumb.
But this one lots of people would agree with. Church leaders want to control people and they spend all their time telling people exactly what they must believe and discouraging them from thinking for themselves.
It’s one of those stereotypes that has little to do with reality. It is certainly not true at St Mark’s Anglican Church Pennant Hills, where at this time of the year we invite you to join a weekly Growth Group.
Growth Groups are small groups of people that meet in a lounge room together once a week to read the Bible together, think through what it says together (without a church leader in sight) and work out how it applies to their lives. They generally have a cuppa and eat Tim Tams while they do it. How subversive is that?
We call them Growth Groups because the idea is that they aid spiritual growth.
We have day time groups and night time groups. We have mixed gender groups, men’s groups and women’s groups. There is a group with a crèche. There is even a group that Karl Marx could join because it’s for people who are not on board with Jesus and his message yet.
If you are interested in reading the Bible with a group of local people in such a subversive manner, get in contact with Craig Schafer our pastor. We promise not to let him take control of you and turn you into a mindless zombie.
But then, we would say that wouldn’t we?