My brother-in-law (as well as most of my family) is expecting me to write a letter with words of encouragement for my father before his "Walk to Emmaus".
What is a "Walk to Emmaus", you say? Here, read for yourself:
The Walk to Emmaus is a spiritual renewal program intended to strengthen the local church through the development of Christian disciples and leader. The Walk to Emmaus experience begins with a 72 hour short course in Christianity, comprised of fifteen talks by lay and clergy on the themes of God's grace, disciplines of Christian discipleship, and what it means to be the church. The course is wrapped in prayer and meditation, special times of worship and daily celebration of Holy Communion.
By the way, this is going to be a surprise for my dad. He doesn't know he's going to be participating yet... that is if they can make him be willing to participate. This just doesn't *seem* like something my dad would do, unless he felt like he HAD to - and then he'd only do it begrudgingly. He's far too anti-social to volunteer for this kind of thing, really. But, organized religion does have a habit of pressuring people into doing things they don't want to.
I honestly don't know what to write. If you noticed the phrase "intended to strengthen the local church" in the description, then all this seems like it's going to be is a brainwashing session of the church exercising its control over its members. There's no chance something like this would make the attendees "closer to God". If I recall correctly, the scriptures say that just by believing in God, you're already as close to Him as you're going to get in this world. God isn't going to look at my dad in extra favor just because he spends an extra weekend worshiping Him. For this group to believe that it would only means that they carry a self-righteous ego, which is something I'm sure that Jesus would not approve of. Therefore, its only purpose must be to have the church demonstrate its dominance over the daily lives of its people.
All it adds up to is a colossal waste of time. I'm tempted to tell him to just go home and enjoy some nice football games instead. He can pray on his own time and on his own terms, and forget about these cult-like Christian groups.
