Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

Ashes wrote:After 4 long years of attending an angry, dysfunctional high school where 90% of the students probably thought that Moby Dick is an STD (Not surprisingly, most of them didn't graduate.)

margin overa wrote:

Ashes wrote: Florida College has been the most positive experience in my life, and saved me from becoming a bitter person.

I think you're the first person I've ever heard say that. The FC graduates I've met were pretty dismissive or even scathing in their opinions of their alma mater.

I hated it. Met some of the worst people, morally speaking, that I have ever known there. I couldn't wait to be done with that place and move on to "a real school."

I didn't much like Wednesday nights, except it was at least short. I wasn't allowed to do anything much of an extracurricular at school anyway, so it wasn't like I was going to be anywhere else. Sunday nights - oh now THAT I did NOT like! No kids class, just 'church'. Repeat of the morning service without the sermon, basically - AND I never in my life saw Wide World of Disney (unless I was sick, and sometimes not even then ('if you are well enough to sit up and watch TV then you are well enough to go to church!').

I like playing tag outside after services though.

Our church had some fine singing. A few off key singers, but overall, the congregational singing was pretty good. Plus, if I ever felt at all 'spiritually uplifted' at church - ever - it was while we were singing.

My only good memory was meeting a young woman who I could have still been friends with if I weren't so antisocial at the time. At the very least we had the entire "not black enough" thing in common.

agricola wrote:I didn't much like Wednesday nights, except it was at least short. I wasn't allowed to do anything much of an extracurricular at school anyway, so it wasn't like I was going to be anywhere else. Sunday nights - oh now THAT I did NOT like! No kids class, just 'church'. Repeat of the morning service without the sermon, basically - AND I never in my life saw Wide World of Disney (unless I was sick, and sometimes not even then ('if you are well enough to sit up and watch TV then you are well enough to go to church!').

Your Sunday evening service didn't have a sermon? We had to go through the whole thing again, sermon included. Of course it was a different sermon from the morning service, sometimes a followup to whatever the morning sermon was about.

By my time it was no longer the Wide World of Disney, it had changed to the Disney Sunday Movie. I hated having to miss it! When my dad brought home a VCR (a sixty pound monstrosity that probably cost $500) the first thing I asked him to tape was the Disney Sunday Movie.

Speaking of good memories, by the time I got old enough to appreciate well-thought-out sermons I was attending a church where the preacher was very good. Highly educated, not "one true church" -ish, strongly focused on social justice, and not caught up in the culture wars. I still don't know how that church is still part of the COC. In fact I heard of visitors storming out mid-sermon, though I never saw it happen myself. Listening to his erudite sermons is one of my best COC memories.

Lev

Yes, every time tha assembly was brung together, there had to be a sermon, or even a relatively brief exhortation to get someone down the aisle and into the watery grave of baptism...but usually a full sermon. We had a preacher in the 1970s whose Wednesday schtick included a fairly long sermon, until the elders let him know that wasn't the done thing on Wednesday nights. I frickin' hated that midweek interruption!

Sunday night was an hour. Wednesday night was an hour including a class. If there was a 'sermon' it was pretty darned short. All I remember were 'remarks'. Sunday MORNING was two hours including a substantial sermon plus a (long) Sunday school class.

Now (when I make it) Saturday morning services are two and a half to three hours long, but the 'sermon' is rarely over 15 minutes or so. The rest is liturgy and Torah reading - plus of course announcements, who's sick this week, etc.

PS if you are ever at a Jewish service, it is perfectly okay and even common for people to get up and go out of the auditorium and come in later on (or not) as long as the Torah ark (the cabinet at the front) is closed (which is most of the time).
No big deal. My husband often spends better than half the service in the lobby, napping on the couch. Did I mention there was a couch? Also there is food afterward, always.

Kids aren't generally expected to have to come in and sit down and be still. Some DO, but it isn't usual.

TONS of great memories. It was my "community," and I grew up feeling loved, cared for, attended to, and having fun. I was very lucky.

I have great memories from my childhood of playing tag after church with the other kids out in the front yard. The best nights were the quarterly men's meeting where we would just spend a good hour outside running around and having fun. I always loved Sunday school as a kid too. We would usually do some arts or crafts type thing, which I always loved. Then the elders decided that was "too entertaining" so we switched to the incredibly boring fill in the blank workbooks. Around the time I was 10 or 11 we got a new preacher and after his first VBS with us, he immediately changed that. He compared our VBS to a "three-ring circus" and from then on our VBS was basically a Wednesday night service every morning throughout the week, boring workbooks and all. Attendance dropped dramatically and I'm not even sure if they even still do VBS anymore. Either way, all of my good CoC memories are before my teenage years, when I started doubting the ridiculous teachings and found the services to be the most dreaded and boring part of my week.