Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

I wasn't raised in the CoC. I joined it when I was a young man. I was taken in by their claim that they got concrete answers entirely from scriptures and I fell for it. Also I felt a great need to be with good, clean living people. Most of my life I was stuck with horrendously foul mouthed idiots. It was very depressing. So I joined the CoC hoping to make good Christian friends. Well... of course they were good clean living people. But I wasn't able to connect with them. They seemed empty, superficial and blank. Some of them reminded my of Peter Sellers' character in 'Being There'. They didn't have any knowledge about anything except what the church put into their heads. Some of them seemed to be rather stunted. Trying to talk to those people was discouraging. They tended to wander off when I was in mid sentence. Where I came from that was considered to be rude. When I could find someone who could pretend to be listening, they'd misunderstand completely. So with no close friends or family in the CoC it was easy to run away. I had much better luck with the Baptists. They came across as a much more genuine, caring people.

There is a certain percentage of people who won't engage in every church. Some groups seem to draw more of these than others. Many people go to church for purely selfish reasons and those people are unlikely to be interested in why you are there. They want to get in and get out with minimal investment (usually in the collection plate as well as socially).

I never had terrible experiences like that until I joined the military. Then, suddenly, I became an outsider and know one really wanted to engage me because I was going to be gone in 2 or 3 years. But there were many times before that I had a sense that particular congregations were not welcoming and they never could understand why they didn't get repeat visitors. They'd always blame it on some tertiary cause like the music or the person not being open to studying the Bible because that is easier than self examination. Back to me: when my first wife miscarried, there was absolutely no empathy from the church except for the preacher, who I was fairly close to. She already didn't like the CoC because she was accustomed to contemporary worship and thought weekly communion was excessive and odd, and the iconoclasm -the hideous barrenness of the average CoC building- turned her off. But after that total lack of support in a difficult time, she quickly stopped attending. And I began looking for other options for us.

I have always thought CofC people were very good, honest, and moral people; but then so are Mormons (from what I have heard), but they are a cult, so that doesn’t really mean anything. The big negative about CofC people is the judgmentalism. I was raised with that, but with all that has happened in my family, I am in no position to judge anyone.
Shane R, I do agree about the plainness of a CofC building. I like having religious paintings and crosses and things like that. I do like taking communion every week, though. To me, something is missing if you don’t have communion. But I know you don’t HAVE to do it every week.

Getting away from that horrible judgemental nature of the CoC lifted a zillion tons of weight off of my mind. I was able to accept all of the 'Whosoever shall believers' as bona fide Christians and not worry about being scowled at by the CoC folks.

I was born into the cOC. I had two different stints. The first was from birth to my early 20's and the second was from my late 30's to early 40's. I was taught from birth that the cOC was the ONE true church. They alone had the truth, denominations were hell bound, and Heaven was going to be basically a never ending church of Christ service. But, not all church of Christ members were going to Heaven. Not even close. Only a select few within the select few. I had it drilled into my head that attendance was absolutely imperative. You could NEVER miss. Not for sickness, not for a death in the family (the death of an immediate family member was acceptable, sort of) and you sure as shit didn't just stay home just to stay home. Want to go on vacation? Well, you have two options. Option number one is to only pick a destination that has a church of Christ close by. Or even if it's not close by. If the closest one is an hour away from your vacation destination, then so be it. So long as you are there front and center if it's a Sunday or a Wednesday. Oh, and bring back a bulletin as proof that you were actually there, because your word just won't cut it. Option number two is to schedule your vacation to fall between Sunday and Wednesday (leave no earlier than Monday morning and be back no later than service time on Wednesday night) or between Wednesday and Sunday. Leave no earlier than Thursday morning and be back no later than Saturday evening. That is of course, if there is no approved church of Christ in the vicinity of your destination city. Surprisingly, a lot of people took option number two. And because there is no third option, some people actually cancelled their vacations because there was not a church of Christ that was accessible and they could not quite get it to fall between Sunday and Wednesday or Wednesday and Sunday. Oh, and if you are going on vacation, don't you DARE leave without informing someone (preferably an elder) that you are going out of town. I got a phone call a time or two (while I was on vacation) on a Thursday morning or a Sunday afternoon (the congregation that I was a part of the second time around did not have Sunday evening services). It was a "missed you" phone call, of course Oh and on that note, what was with the choice of words, "we missed you". It was really code for "where were you??" I mean, why not just point blank ask "where were you?" LOL I used to get chastised because I refused to make those phone calls like others did. i just could not do it. I mean, if someone was not there, then they simply were not there! Where they were did not concern me or anyone else. That was their business. There is so much that I don't miss about the cOC. Oh, and I could write volumes about withdrawing from an erring brother. How exactly do you withdraw from someone who has already left? I mean, haven't they already withdrawn themselves? Why is their a need to say "we hereby withdraw from you, when the person is already gone?

Ahhh yes. There were those self appointed attendance police. Yeah... I loved that, 'We missed you' line. Sure they did. I was in the National Guard and had to be away for a couple of weeks for annual summer camp. When I'd come back I'd have this line of self appointed attendance police-persons grilling me as to why I haven't been around for a couple of weeks. Then there was Wednesday nights. I usually had to work. They didn't buy that as an excuse. I quickly found Wednesday night services to be humanly unbearable to attend. I'd rather been at work and my job was a heller. I couldn't imagine any god, devil, angel, demon, leprecaun, Santa Claus, tooth fairy or any other supernatural entity having the endurance to sit through a Wednesday night service.

no-cults-4-me wrote:I wasn't raised in the CoC. I joined it when I was a young man. I was taken in by their claim that they got concrete answers entirely from scriptures and I fell for it. Also I felt a great need to be with good, clean living people. Most of my life I was stuck with horrendously foul mouthed idiots. It was very depressing. So I joined the CoC hoping to make good Christian friends. Well... of course they were good clean living people. But I wasn't able to connect with them. They seemed empty, superficial and blank. Some of them reminded my of Peter Sellers' character in 'Being There'. They didn't have any knowledge about anything except what the church put into their heads. Some of them seemed to be rather stunted. Trying to talk to those people was discouraging. They tended to wander off when I was in mid sentence. Where I came from that was considered to be rude. When I could find someone who could pretend to be listening, they'd misunderstand completely. So with no close friends or family in the CoC it was easy to run away. I had much better luck with the Baptists. They came across as a much more genuine, caring people.

That was a good post. I was born into CoC congregations and adopted that philosophy for many years. I have been out almost 50 years. The CoC was my parents Church but NOT my Church. They have a very ridgid sense of what Christianity is and is not and a black and white sense about sin. The Bible does not cover every reason for divorce. In the CoC you could get a divorce for unfaithfulness and remain in fellowship. This leads to unfounded accusations against the innocent party. I know this because it happened close to me.
I am glad you found a home with Baptists. Some Baptist groups do have their conservative line in ways different from the CoC. I was taught in the CoC that all denominations were evil. The denominations are a historical artifact. I found out that they are not evil when I have looked. They just have a differed have different way of looking at scripture. I have even known Catholic Christians that were fine well centered people. So by all means investigate the LIE. I have heard several in the CoC. If you don't look you don't see. If you don't investigate you will believe a lie is truth. I like early church history with all its creeds. This set the tone for the church as it is today even the Church of Christ though they would deny it. They also owe much to the Catholic and Orthodox Churches for the best copies of early Bibles we have. This is a huge subject for which you can easily spend a lifetime. The CoC does not have Bible authority to speak about denominations. They will have to write their own.

Shane R wrote:
She already didn't like the CoC because she was accustomed to contemporary worship and thought weekly communion was excessive and odd,

It definitively is odd compared to most Churches.

FinallyFree wrote: I am in no position to judge anyone.

Judging other people opens a can of worms. The problem is the judge perfect. If not should they be judged? At some point an organization does need to control its membership. Paul did write about this problem.

no-cults-4-me wrote:Ahhh yes. There were those self appointed attendance police. Yeah... I loved that,

One preacher we had taught attendance every Sunday. Why go to church when you were going to learn nothing more. I even had a perfect attendance pin for one year but couldn't get the wreaths around it for 2nd and third years. I found it in stuff I kept for many years. I threw it in the trash because I do not need to be reminded of the the wasted time.