Right then… this one is a short, sharp post to air the worst-kept secret in our household: I hate attending church.
Well, maybe HATE is too strong a word… but I certainly DISLIKE attending church.
Here are my Top 10 reasons for that dislike of church:
- Church is commonly attended by people who are not sure why they attend.
- Churches rarely teach the Gospel that Jesus of Nazareth taught.
- Churches are often attended by a majority who are 20 years my elders… and I am almost 40!
- Most church services are pitched at children and women, being non-inclusive of men and non-parents.
- Strangers are usually treated with suspicion and/or the “membership mentality”.
- Issues of real, 21st-century life are either not addressed or treated by shallow responses.
- Few who self-identify as Christians evidence any difference in their lifestyle to the majority in wider society.
- Churches are treated like entertainment centres instead of sacred, communal spaces.
- Worship is superficial and shallow, evidenced through twee music and platitudinous mumblings.
- Given the above, it’s like holding a mirror up to my own life, faith and attitudes.
There. That feels better.
Admittedly, I am writing about my own experience of British Protestant-influenced Anglican and Non-Conformist Christianity. (Blimey – now there is a long stream of jargon!) Yet, given the observations of many other folk who nervously self-identify as Christians but who don’t attend churches, I wonder if my dirty little secret isn’t really quite a wide-spread one.
Whatever you think of my little list, it’s still how I feel about church.
I really don’t like it.
You know I concur. I used to attend church, but never felt comfortable with the rituals–reciting and repeating, and communion. Church should be within you not outward show.
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What is twee music?
Twee: Something that is sweet, almost to the point of being sickeningly so. As a derogatory descriptive, it means something that is affectedly dainty or quaint, or is way too sentimental. In British English it is used widely for things that are nauseatingly cute or precious. It comes from the way the word sweet sounds when said in baby talk.
I agree. I go to support my wife. There are some lovely people in church, but to many, we are the parents of the autistic (or daft) boy.
At the service we go to, the worship is lively and the teaching is excellent. But only a very few will talk to us. Church is about caring and sharing, but I have not come across that for years. Our child has special needs; we almost feel like lepers.
It’s even worse in more traditional settings. We were barely tolerated.
I am increasingly disappointed by church, and God’s Holy People. I don’t know how to make it better.
May be the church should make itself more relevant, rather than being a twee place in which the liturgy is worshipped, and songs are sung from a Victorian anthology truly bad verse, in whcih there are unintelligible lines that are so bad that they are almost sexy.
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