Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

So, did you have any friends in your CoC? What was your relationship like with them? Where they your only friends? What happened to them when you left?

I don't really have "friends" in the CoC, per se. We don't have enough in common to be called "friends". We are more like acquaintances.

Honestly, I don't have anything in common with most people in my CoC, and I suspect the CoC in general.

When I was a kid I had several really good friends in the CoC. It was great, we'd all play tag out front after services during the summer, go to each other's houses on Sunday afternoon, those times are easily my best memories in the CoC. Over time some moved away and as we got into our teenage years it seemed the rest of us all drifted apart. I hated my late teenage years in the CoC because there weren't many other people my age and we had almost nothing in common whatsoever. My parents were huge social people so we'd arrive at church a half hour early almost every service so they could talk before. Since I didn't really have any fiends in church at the time, I'd awkwardly just sit in our pew and thumb through the song book or something while a few adults would walk by and say something to me. My parents would always pressure me to make fiends in the church because "they were the kind of people I needed to be hanging out with". They didn't understand that we had nothing in common whatsoever, but according to them being members of "the church" was all you needed to have in common.

When I went to college I made several friends in the small CoC I went to. There were only a few other college aged people, but we became pretty good friends. I'll never forget after about a year and not hanging out much outside of Sunday after church, a few of them had a little house party and invited me over one Friday night. I was shocked to hear what seemed like picture perfect CoC christians cussing like sailors, getting completely drunk and trying to find another one of their friends to bring over some pot. That night I realized that the whole "good wholesome christian" act was all totally fake. We still remained friends, but after I left the CoC for good I haven't talked to any of them since. I think they all eventually went their separate ways too.

I do very well recall as a kid being pressured to bring all of our friends to church and to teach them "the truth". We were made to feel like we should only be friends with other CoCers and that if someone wasn't a member of "the church" it was implied that they weren't a good person and we shouldn't associate with them.

MusicMan826 wrote:I was shocked to hear what seemed like picture perfect CoC christians cussing like sailors, getting completely drunk and trying to find another one of their friends to bring over some pot.

Sounds like pretty normal cofc young adults to me.

Our friends from church were our only "true" friends. Never mind that I saw some of them only at church and our friendship consisted mostly of talking before or after class and church. It was awkward and embarrassing to have a birthday party at our house and the neighbor kids weren't invited because a family event had to double as something for the young people at church. The C of C was celebrated more than a birthday. Never mind that I saw the neighbor kids every day at school and afterward. They were mostly Baptist and Methodist,and thus, we couldn't invite them to a social event where it was all about the C of C.

I keep in touch with friends from those days, but mostly the non-church ones. They seem to understand that a lot of what went on was beyond my control. Whenever I've gone back to that city, I don't visit our old church. I've driven by it because our house was adjacent, but no desire to attend a service there, and I've made that clear. At one of our more recent reunions, I went to my old neighborhood late on Sunday morning and the church parking lot was full. My old neighbors saw me and we had a nice visit. Obviously, I had not been to church, as the service was still in progress (and apparently ran long), and I was in a t-shirts, shorts and barefoot. We had a nice, normal conversation and a lovely visit.

Of all the kids I went to church with in high school, I think only one is still an ardent C of C'er.

When I was a teenager, my home church had a large group of young people, and several were my very good friends then. Of course, there was plenty of cussin' and drankin' and experimenting with drugs and sex. Not everyone in the group, but more than half, for sure. The usual teenager routine.

I have several friends I've kept in touch with over the years, a number I met at FHU. By that time, the bloom was certainly off the CofC rose for me, and the friends I made at Freed tended to be of like mind. Only a couple are still CofCers, and not of the doctrinaire variety. One guy I hung around with a lot in high school and college (and did a lot of teenaged hijinks with) has turned into a very rigid CofCer. That often happens in people raised fundie after they've sown some wild oats - guilt catches up with them, and they become standard-bearers for their childhood religions, maybe thinking they're performing penance for their sins.

My old church briefly had a youth minister - a guy the elders shanghaied into performing the work without paying him - and he used to say that "the best defense against the world for young people is Christian friends". He was a good guy, but so naive...we were up to what teenagers are usually up to, and pulling along the rest of the youth group with us. Lots of elders' kids, the preacher's kids, deacons' kids.

MusicMan826 wrote:fiends in the church

Freudian slip?

Lev

MusicMan826 wrote:That night I realized that the whole "good wholesome christian" act was all totally fake.

This was my biggest problem with my COC friends. Other friends (from "the world") did all the same things, of course, but they were honest about it. In my experience, COC kids and young adults weren't any better than anyone else, they just kept all their shenanigans on the sly, or tried to. It was the hypocrisy that was hard for me to get past. Of course I was just as guilty of it as anyone else. Nowadays I feel free to be honest about who I am and what I do with one big exception: when I'm interacting with still-COC friends and family. Just to avoid unnecessary controversy, I shift back into my old two-faced self whenever anything objectionable-to-the-COC might come up. I know several posters here have talked about this and how they've developed a "screw 'em" attitude. I'm not quite there yet.

Lev

coC friends?

1. What happens to your friends in The Church when you leave to go to another coC? They bail on you.
2. What happens if someone in The Church gets in trouble? They bail on them.
3. What happens if you ask them to enjoy some kind of fun activity with you (like boating, snow/water skiing, bowling, hiking etc…)? They have no interest in those activities.
4. How many of your former coC friends contact you now that you have left The Church? None.

Last year, I attended a funeral of one of my former Elders. All 7 of his children showed up. Only 4 of them recognized me even though as kids growing up we were supposedly close friends, of similar age and our families were very close. Friendships within the coC are just like everywhere else. Those acquaintances come and go quickly and are typically not as deep as one may think.

Lev wrote:

MusicMan826 wrote:That night I realized that the whole "good wholesome christian" act was all totally fake.

This was my biggest problem with my COC friends. Other friends (from "the world") did all the same things, of course, but they were honest about it. In my experience, COC kids and young adults weren't any better than anyone else, they just kept all their shenanigans on the sly, or tried to. It was the hypocrisy that was hard for me to get past. Of course I was just as guilty of it as anyone else. Nowadays I feel free to be honest about who I am and what I do with one big exception: when I'm interacting with still-COC friends and family. Just to avoid unnecessary controversy, I shift back into my old two-faced self whenever anything objectionable-to-the-COC might come up. I know several posters here have talked about this and how they've developed a "screw 'em" attitude. I'm not quite there yet.

Lev

While that might fulfill some teenage-era fantasy of telling the world to go to hell, I still value most of my family relationships, and I'm not out to just ruffle feathers over religion. Although I still disagree with them, they're still family, and many of them have stepped out of the CofC mindset just enough to realize that ostracizing doesn't accomplish much. I'll give them that, for sure - including my parents, even if they still fret over the fact that I'm not of their religious tribe anymore.

I went to David Lipscomb High School and College, and attended the Crieve Hall congregation in Nashville. I did pal around with a few people from my graduating class (1979 High School, 1983 College) who also went to Crieve Hall. I saw them at church every Sunday and would occasionally go out to lunch or dinner with a group of them. (In a lot of ways, though, I was always closer to my "non-church" pals who actually shared my interests, like other people who collected comic books and liked science fiction and horror books and films .) I don't attend services anymore, but I don't mind briefly chatting with the COC people if I encounter them elsewhere whilst shopping or doing errands. Other than that, I'm not really close with them.

In the past few years, I have rekindled some relationships with people that I grew up with -- I lived in Hendersonville, TN, near Nashville, from 1963 to 1977 (spent my "formative years" there, one might say). It is easier to pal around with these "secular folk", nowadays, for various reasons.