The old expression is “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” A new one for religious people might be “Don’t judge a Church by social media.”

Recently, my wife and I visited two megachurches on our vacation. If you were to go online and search for a while, you would find some very negative things written about both of these Churches; from the comments on posts, scathing Reddit discussions, to TikTok reels that will tell you everything evil about these Christian communities.

What my wife and I discovered were people who loved Jesus, were welcoming to us, and whose lives were being transformed by the Gospel. We found our experiences to be encouraging and uplifting. We heard people teach from the Bible and loudly sing the praises of Jesus.

While I admit that neither of these Churches is “my style” of community, it was exciting to see all that God was doing through them.

My advice is that before you say a negative word about a Church, you should go and visit. Talk to the people, and ask questions about their faith. Sure, every Church has flaws because it is composed of flawed people, but most of the people I met were genuinely trying to serve the Lord with all their heart and love their neighbor.

God is working in this world in various ways through all kinds of people. Just because they don’t act like you or in a style you like doesn’t mean they are bad people. It simply means there is diversity in the body of Christ, and that is worth praising rather than condemning.