Church Attendance

[MusicMan826]

As most of you well know, the single most important thing as a CoCer is church attendance. It doesn't matter how good of a person you are, doesn't matter how much you do to help others. If your butt isn't in the pew every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, gospel meeting, vacation bible school, or every other bible study or meeting the elders decide to hold...nothing else you do matters, you can't possibly be a good Christian and you can kiss any hope of heaven goodbye.

How many CoC services did you have to endure where that was the absolute last place you wanted to be? I remember even in high school there were a couple times when I had a pretty bad headache on a Wednesday night and still had to go to church. "If you're not feeling well we need to take you to a doctor!" my dad would sarcastically say when I would try to stay home on Wednesday night due to not feeling so hot. A headache wasn't a good enough reason to miss. Being exhausted certainly wasn't a good enough reason to miss. What was a good enough reason? For some it seemed like death was the only good reason to ever miss a service.

The strict attendance policy is the reason I never went on a real vacation until I was 19 years old. As a kid we never went on a vacation...not even a weekend away, because there might not be a CoC where we were visiting and missing one week for vacation was absolutely not allowed. The most infuriating thing for me is when my grandmother was on her deathbed she broke down one night, fearing she was going to hell. Why? Because she hasn't been to church in over a year...a year in which she was basically confined to her bed and needed help doing the simplest tasks like going to the bathroom. But of course 70 years of CoC fear came back to her and she was afraid those reasons weren't good enough for God to miss church. Makes me SO glad that I'm gone from that mentality where I have to revolve my entire life around a few hours a week where there is never any excuse to miss, and if you do miss you'd better have an answer ready for somebody.

[agricola]

As most of you well know, the single most important thing as a CoCer is church attendance. It doesn't matter how good of a person you are, doesn't matter how much you do to help others. If your butt isn't in the pew every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, gospel meeting, vacation bible school, or every other bible study or meeting the elders decide to hold...nothing else you do matters, you can't possibly be a good Christian and you can kiss any hope of heaven goodbye.

How many CoC services did you have to endure where that was the absolute last place you wanted to be? I remember even in high school there were a couple times when I had a pretty bad headache on a Wednesday night and still had to go to church. "If you're not feeling well we need to take you to a doctor!" my dad would sarcastically say when I would try to stay home on Wednesday night due to not feeling so hot. A headache wasn't a good enough reason to miss. Being exhausted certainly wasn't a good enough reason to miss. What was a good enough reason? For some it seemed like death was the only good reason to ever miss a service.

The strict attendance policy is the reason I never went on a real vacation until I was 19 years old. As a kid we never went on a vacation...not even a weekend away, because there might not be a CoC where we were visiting and missing one week for vacation was absolutely not allowed. The most infuriating thing for me is when my grandmother was on her deathbed she broke down one night, fearing she was going to hell. Why? Because she hasn't been to church in over a year...a year in which she was basically confined to her bed and needed help doing the simplest tasks like going to the bathroom. But of course 70 years of CoC fear came back to her and she was afraid those reasons weren't good enough for God to miss church. Makes me SO glad that I'm gone from that mentality where I have to revolve my entire life around a few hours a week where there is never any excuse to miss, and if you do miss you'd better have an answer ready for somebody.

You've got it.

We went on vacations - we just had to line up where we'd be every Sunday. Mother didn't like missing Wednesday nights but Daddy didn't mind so much, so we didn't ALWAYS find a coc for Wednesdays - but good heavens, of course we couldn't possibly miss one if we were HOME!

Also, if we were sick enough to stay home from church, we were ALSO too sick to be in the den watching television. You had to be bedridden to be too sick for church.

[cathym]

Too sick for church meant running a fever, pretty much. Vomiting or other GI distress would probably have done it,too, but I don't recall a time when those were present without a fever.

We also went on vacations -- but not to those evil Anheuser-Busch theme parks! -- but part of the planning was making sure we were in a town with a suitable church on Sundays and Wednesdays. (NI churches were not suitable; only "mainstream" for us!)

[MusicMan826]

Also, if we were sick enough to stay home from church, we were ALSO too sick to be in the den watching television. You had to be bedridden to be too sick for church.

YES!! I can still hear my dad say, "If you're well enough to watch tv, you're well enough to go to church." Even when I stayed home from school when I was a kid, I was allowed to lay in bed and watch tv at least. But when it comes to church, there was no such thing as "too sick to go to church".

[katisha]

I gave birth to my son on a Wednesday morning. I HAD to be at services on Sunday.

I had surgery on my knee on Friday. I HAD to be at services on Sunday.

We had a death in the immediate family on Saturday. We all HAD to be at services on Sunday.

I attended services with bronchitis, laryngitis, shingles, broken bones, and migraines.

My ex broke his leg while working on the JOY bus and finished the route before being allowed to sit down.

Before everything else, the Church came first.

Why? Why did I allow that to happen? I am not a stupid person. But I allowed it to happen for 26 years.

[KLP]

There is no authoritay for a Bus.

[Struggler]

The obsession with attendance was never-ending. If someone missed a service, people would talk among themselves afterward, wondering where that person was. If you missed a service, you'd get the occasional "We missed you," but all too often, it was "Where were you?"

I used to be obsessed with attendance myself. It was drilled into us. Any job I ever had, I was always admonished to make sure I had Sundays and Wednesday nights off because church came first. Not Jesus, but church. During college, I worked many hours in addition to class, and my only time off was Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. At my first full-time job out of college, we had a weekend conference out of town. Company paid for us to be there Friday and Saturday nights, as events were Friday night and all-day Saturday. I dutifully checked out early Sunday morning, dressed for church and drove in search of a C of C. Got home that afternoon and instead of enjoying some down time, I went to my own church on Sunday night.

For several years, I could easily count the handful of times I missed a service other than illness because it was so rare. Once in college to attend a speech and dinner; a road trip with friends; and once time, when I got paid a lot of money to work on a Sunday.

It all started to change when I started dating this girl who didn't attend church and also stopped teaching a Wednesday night class. I realized that attendance is not the end-all and be-all.

[KLP]

I know a large congregation that tracks data on attendance. So they have this big magnetic whiteboard on the wall with every member/photo in a grid and alphabetical. As you arrive you mark your name as "present" with a colored dot (green I think but maybe black). (surprised it is not a check mark icon) And then if you know someone is sick you mark their name with a color to indicate sick. Long term sick "shut-ins" have their own color dot. I guess those who do not show just have no marker??? I guess.

So then afterwards I see a guy there with an iPad/tablet recording all the dots and data. I am guessing it goes into a database, I did not ask as I would not want to appear too interested. I wish I knew what the data was used for and why it is being recorded. I guess it is just another "duty" assigned out to one of the men but it is so odd IMO. But I guess with that many people there is no way to keep track on every person to see who is trending up or down. I am assuming for data entry purposes on the tablet app you only have to tag the absent/sick and presume everyone else is in attendance. And then the board is cleared making it ready for the next appointed time.

[OneStrike_ur_out]

I never got why they thought that anything less than 110% attendance was SO bad and unacceptable. During my first stint in the cOC, I was told by somone "you know that if don't give this thing your aboslute ALL, then you go to hell, right?". I got pulled into the madness by responding. I said "well, I'm hear like 9 times out of 10, it's just that every once in awhile, something comes up". The dude laughed and said that 9 times out of 10 "just wasn't cutting it". During my second stint in the cOC, I was there, front and center every time the doors were open. Then came the time I missed *GASP*, two Wednesday nights in a ROW!! Well, I got dressed down for it and inevitably, they compared me to someone else who made 1000% of the services. There is always a so and so who was NEVER out for ANY reason and would not even go out of town unless they could get it to fall between Thursday and Saturday. And the funny thing about so and so was, no matter what you had going on in your life, so and so had it that much worse and STILL made every single service every single time, no matter what. For instance, you could say "well I work 50 hours or more a week". So and so works 70 hours or more. "I have a lot to do and not a lot of time to get it done". Well, old so and so has way more to do than you do and he gets it all done. If I have a yard to cut, I guarantee that so and so had 10 yards to cut. It was insane!

[Lev]

"If you're well enough to watch tv, you're well enough to go to church."

It's a shame that meeting together with the church for the purpose of mutual edification has been watered down to the point that it requires no more energy than passively watching TV.

Lev