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Dear Abby …
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Dear Abby,
I would like to complain about church. Church is a total flop, as far as I can tell. I don’t know why I keep going. I’ve been attending church for about twenty years now, with precious little to show for it.
First of all, the music is God-awful, the sermons are irrelevant and interminable, the liturgy caters to women, and the people are hypocrites. You have to sing either 19th century hymns or wimpy, touchy-feely songs played by limp-wristed losers (if you know what I mean) who know precisely four major chords.
In my experience (and I’ve been to plenty of churches in my day), the pastors are either little Napoleons or lily-livered ciphers. And try to get them on the phone in the middle of the week, ha! What do they do with all their free time anyway, while the rest of us have real jobs? You’d think they could come up with better preaching considering all that time on their hands.
One of them had the nerve to come to my house, take a whole afternoon of my time, and suggest that I pray for him and the elders, and maybe come to the 8 a.m. Sunday prayer meeting — as if I don’t deserve one morning of sleeping in, while he only works one day a week. I think it’s up to the Management to find something that suits their public and that doesn’t bore us, don’t you agree?
Joe Churchgoer
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Gloomy conservatives
four major chords in contemporary music? Do you really get paid to write this stuff?
Who wrote this? No, four major chords would mean tonic, dominant, subdominant, those are the main three used in hymns, and if you need a fourth, I would guess that the secondary dominant would be it. But you are not referring to hymns.
If there are four chords and it is contemporary music, then there are MINOR chords being used, not just major ones.
Joe shouldn’t be communicating with the dead.
What ever happened to the idea that church is not about me but about God? God already gave us everything we have and are. Church is where we go to worship and thank Him. (Yes, it’s also about fellowship with other believers but with a view to what we can give not what we can get.)
Bianca–in stitches just now–thanks
Not all people who voice these complaints should be viewed stereo-typically. Are these kinds of articles helping us related to real people in our lives, or not?
I don’t know how to react to this one. There are some complaints of the church that are indeed petty as illustrated by this letter (music preference wars, perception that the pastor only works one day a week, a “feed-me” approach to learning Biblical truth).
On the other hand, there are valid concerns. The spectator sport approach to church where the large, Sunday morning “big game” is emphasized and true community and interaction is diminished. The rise of emotionalism at the expense of content. The lack of venues to truly “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another”. The fact that the church does little better than the world in keeping our marriages together. The fact that the church “got it” about abortion and gay marriage but is a few decades late in truly ministering to HIV/Aids victims.
So some complaints about the church are to be laughed at in satire. Others can be taken seriously.
Don’t go.
If true, I can see why Joe would want to stay way from church too.
But, thankfully we have Mega-Extravaganza churches for churchgoers like Joe to be entertained in. He could possibly bring his own band and do a set songs he likes and be cured of any other ailments he might have with the laying on of hands and and exchange of money in large envelopes of course
Not everyone goes to a mega church to be entertained. This is just inadequate thinking.
Some people attend mega churches because, for example, it might be the only place where they are accepted as a divorced person. I know a church that started this way in my area. It has grown substantially, and has effective ministries now not only to the divorced (they saved me over $1,000.00 on car work that didn’t need to be done, and I had no way to pay) with Divorce Care and relational integrity type studies, Grief Share, and even help for those engaged to help determine if they are making a wise choice. This is a very short list of examples that demonstrate the attention that is being paid to real peoples’ lives and the needs that exist.
Reg,
I’ll give you that not every mega/gigachurch is about entertainment if you’ll grant that not every Reformed church is full of abusive leadership. There are some that fit our preconceived stereotypes and some that are God-honoring and Bible-teaching.
Deal?
Church bashing 101.
It usually comes from an inadequate understanding of the nature of the church. From both sides, pew and pulpit.
When the pulpit inadequately defines the church to the pew, it results in ministries and services that lack depth and members who are dissatisfied.
When the pew people put all of their theological eggs in the basket of the typical church, they will be dissastisfied because no local church can address the needs of all attendees.
I’ve been on both sides. As a former pastor I tried to create a balanced ministry, but there was always somebody that was unhappy. Now that I’m on the pew side, I look for opportunities to make our local church better. I’m happier as a church member than I was as a church leader.
Maybe that’s the answer to Joe. Find something that will make it better and quit your whining.
10-”Maybe that’s the answer to Joe. Find something that will make it better and quit your whining.” If he is a true seeker, this is a great answer.
9-That sounds great. I don’t know it to be true from my own experience, so I will have to hope for the best here. Though, I must admit I am no longer reformed because I do not believe that the reformed theology is the best representation of God and His Word.
Reg,
Just curious what you think does best represent God and his Word?
Reg,
I would suggest that you pray to God for a sense of humor. There can be no love without humor.
Great column, Andree. Funny and perceptive.
12-
At this point in my life, I don’t have a public answer to that question.
13-
you obviously don’t know me,
From the article; “…and suggest that I pray for him and the elders, and maybe come to the 8 a.m. Sunday prayer meeting.”
I like that. Those who pray hard for their spiritual leaders and church co-workers are usually not those who complain. And there are many many complainers in today’s churches.
Reg,
what’s your beef with Reformed theology?
I’m not Reformed either btw.
All I can do is ramble. The umpteen million theses.
I do not believe that it is God’s will for us to elevate certain truths out of the context of His Word and construct our theology around those chosen truths, which by that point become UN-true. Other truth from His Word is now ignored because it doesn’t fit.
I have found that many things cannot even be discussed with reformed people because they ONLY allow for certain things to be true, and if it doesn’t fit, then you are a heretic.
We do not live in the time period which brought about the reformation and therefore we cannot totally understand what was happening. For us to depend on what someone else decided hundreds of years ago and to ignore what is going on in peoples’ lives today is just not thinking.
The bible was not given to us to end our thought processes.
#18 “I do not believe that it is God’s will for us to elevate certain truths out of the context of His Word and construct our theology around those chosen truths … The bible was not given to us to end our thought processes.”
Reg,
How true.
My own experience of churches doing that was not in reformed churches but in fundamentalist Baptist churches. They had some of the other problems you have mentioned elsewhere, in terms of having authoritarian leadership with whom you dare not disagree (even about things other than theology) or you would be considered divisive and backslidden.
It’s a common failing, I’m sure, and hardly confined to one theological condition. I was very happy to discover reformed theology because the churches I have been at that held to reformed theology did not have those particular failings. (Naturally they had others, as we all know there’s no perfect church.) So your experience is perhaps a mirror image of mine.
It’s mostly been recently, mostly through interaction on this blog, that I’ve realized that the churches that turned me off from fundamentalism were not, after all, particularly representative of the tradition.
Churchgoer, Churchgoer, you have no complaint..
You are what your are and you ain’t what you ain’t
So listen up Buster, and listen up good
Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood
REG - 18
—–“I do not believe that it is God’s will for us to elevate certain truths out of the context of His Word and construct our theology around those chosen truths, which by that point become UN-true. Other truth from His Word is now ignored because it doesn’t fit.”—–
What do you believe specifically?
Do you believe the DEITY of Christ?
The virgin birth of Christ?
Christ resurrection bodily from the grave?
Do you believe that the Bible is infallible?
Do you believe in a literal Heaven and Hell?
Do you believe Salvation is only through Jesus Christ?
It’s unfortunate when “megachurches” or any church gets a bad rap or a bad name because it does not fulfill your needs as a man or woman. But guess what… it’s not the church that needs to fulfill you. The church is only as good as it’s people. If you want change be the change you want to see.
Even in small churches people go unfulfilled and lonely. They are searching for something that cannot be found in the main church. Sure you get great information from the pastors when you really listen. And sure that girl over there is cute and maybe you can ask her out. But what of the reason you are there. What of your relationship with the only one that matters?
We cannot continue to blame others for what we should change ourselves.
21-
who needs a sense of humor-13- with Victoria around?
I will laugh myself to sleep tonight, unless I get to the chamomile tea first!!
V-
To all of the yes and no questions that you asked,
the answer is yes.
My experience is pretty much the same as Pauline’s. I experienced that same sort of attitude in Baptist churches. I’d ask a question about repentance and folks would start trying to convert me with the 4 spiritual laws….
It got old pretty quickly. I now attend a “non-denominational” house church whose pastor is reformed theology in the PCA.
Dear Joe Churchgoer,
Do what everyone else does in America, start your own church.
Abby