I Am Done With Church

[Lewis]

Why these Americans are 'done' with church, but not with God
http://www.rocketnews.com/2015/12/why-these-americans-are-done-with-church-but-not-with-god/

Kyle Rice pretty much stopped going to church a few years ago.

 

[iLOVE]

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 1 Timothy 4:1 NIV

 

[Obadiah]

Why these Americans are 'done' with church, but not with God
https://www.yahoo.com/?fr=fptb-tyc-sc

Kyle Rice pretty much stopped going to church a few years ago.

Do you have a better link? The one you posted here as well as the one in another thread you started only goes to a Yahoo news page with a bunch of unrelated stories. This is a pretty broad subject to discuss without some specific points that may have come from the article that went along with this picture.

 

[Obadiah]

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 1 Timothy 4:1 NIV

I would be very careful about passing this kind of judgement on anyone who doesn't attend traditional church services in the way you perceive it should be done. The verse you posted is no doubt true for some, but I've looked into this a lot in the last few years since I live in an area that has one of the largest percentages of people who do not go to regular church services but yet claim Christianity. Most of them have reasons that are very different than what you are suggesting here.

Sadly I've found myself no longer attending church either. It's not because I have abandoned my faith in God. As a matter of fact, it may very well be stronger now than it was, say, even a year ago. It's because the leadership of the church I was at was making too many very unbiblical decisions and when one too many of those decisions affected me directly I left and never went back. Since then, the pastor has even declared himself an atheist and is actively promoting atheism on the internet now. I think these kind of things justify my decision to leave that church as being more Godly than the idea that my lack of attending indicates that I have abandoned my faith.

And yes, I've looked around for a new church, but my choices in a small town are pretty limited and it's just not practical for me to get involved in a church that is halfway across the county. The local ones that I've looked into all seem to have the same problems that I left, so there really isn't any sense in getting involved and attached to one of them just to run into the same old problems and get hurt by them again.

I would love to be part of a church that truly uses their time together to worship God in the way scripture tells us to worship him rather than spending 90% of their time worrying about other less important things like politics, legalism, the color of their carpeting, and who's sleeping with who. They need to stop conducting "worship" services that are about 20% worship (if any at all) and 80% vain rituals and warmed over sermons saying the same thing I've heard 100 times before over and over again until the hardest thing I do all week is trying to force myself to stay awake through yet another boring sermon on the same old topics. On a really sad note, the best sermons I've ever heard were from the guy that's now declared himself an atheist. I still don't know what to make of that! But our churches need to start focusing on actual praise and worship of God, and put the majority of their efforts into that. Some do. But unfortunately there aren't enough of them around and a lot of Christians do not live close enough to one of them. So they simply don't attend anymore.

I would suggest that most people who no longer attend church but still have faith in God are not failing to attend because of what's described in 1 Tim 4:1, but rather because they are simply unable to find a church where there is enough emphasis on praising and worshiping God to make it worth dedicating themselves to it.

 

[JLB]

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 1 Timothy 4:1 NIV

Is this scripture you posted here, "why" some people have stopped going to Church, or "why" some people should stop going to Church?



JLB

 

[JLB]

Here is the flip side of this issue, from a site called ex-pastors.com.

A short paragraph about why Pastors leave the ministry -

Most pastors are overworked.

90% of pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week and 50% feel unable to meet the demands of the job.

And 70% of pastors feel grossly underpaid.

Most pastors feel unprepared.

90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the ministry demands and 90% of pastors said the ministry was completely different than what they thought it would be like before they entered the ministry.

Many pastors struggle with depression and discouragement.

70% of pastors constantly fight depression and 50% of pastors feel so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.

Wait, this is huge. Let’s pause here for a moment.

This means that half of the 1,700 or so pastors who leave the ministry each month have no other way of making a living. Their education and experience is wrapped up solely in the work of the ministry.

So, not only do pastors struggle with their choice to leave ministry, they have to worry about how they are going to feed their families.

Speaking of families, most pastor’s families are negatively impacted.

80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. 80% of spouses feel the pastor is overworked and feel left out and under-appreciated by church members.

Many pastors are lonely.

70% do not have someone they consider a close friend and 40% report serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month.

And then there is this: read more at ex-pastors.com


http://www.expastors.com/why-do-so-many-pastors-leave-the-ministry-the-facts-will-shock-you/



JLB

 

[Lewis]

Why these Americans are ‘done’ with church, but not with God
http://www.rocketnews.com/2015/12/why-these-americans-are-done-with-church-but-not-with-god/

Obadiah, I had no way of knowing that those links would show up like that. but the first post has been corrected, with the right one like this one is.

 

[Jethro Bodine]

From the article...

" the marriage and family therapist in Torrington, Wyo., has hardly abandoned his Christian faith – or his deep longing to share it with others and experience God’s love within a community of believers."
​

'Bout sums it up for me, except that I'm just very picky about what church I will attend, not that I've abandoned them altogether.

 

[Jethro Bodine]

Here is the flip side of this issue, from a site called ex-pastors.com.

A short paragraph about why Pastors leave the ministry -

Most pastors are overworked.

90% of pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week and 50% feel unable to meet the demands of the job.

And 70% of pastors feel grossly underpaid.

Most pastors feel unprepared.

90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the ministry demands and 90% of pastors said the ministry was completely different than what they thought it would be like before they entered the ministry.



Many pastors struggle with depression and discouragement.

70% of pastors constantly fight depression and 50% of pastors feel so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.

Wait, this is huge. Let’s pause here for a moment.

This means that half of the 1,700 or so pastors who leave the ministry each month have no other way of making a living. Their education and experience is wrapped up solely in the work of the ministry.

So, not only do pastors struggle with their choice to leave ministry, they have to worry about how they are going to feed their families.

Speaking of families, most pastor’s families are negatively impacted.

80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. 80% of spouses feel the pastor is overworked and feel left out and under-appreciated by church members.

Many pastors are lonely.

70% do not have someone they consider a close friend and 40% report serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month.

And then there is this: read more at ex-pastors.com


http://www.expastors.com/why-do-so-many-pastors-leave-the-ministry-the-facts-will-shock-you/



JLB

So, basically, most pastors do not have what they are trying to teach the flock to have.
How can they possibly be effective if that is true?

It's getting time for the new church movement.
Personal hindrances and struggles keep me from starting it where I live.

 

[JLB]

So, basically, most pastors do not have what they are trying to teach the flock to have.
How can they possibly be effective if that is true?

It's getting time for the new church movement.
Personal hindrances and struggles keep me from starting it where I live.

The Church was never designed to be "run" by Pastors.


As a side note: If our salvation is predicated on "going" to Church once a week for 2 hours, we are already lost.



JLB

 

[Obadiah]

Why these Americans are ‘done’ with church, but not with God
http://www.rocketnews.com/2015/12/why-these-americans-are-done-with-church-but-not-with-god/

Obadiah, I had no way of knowing that those links would show up like that. but the first post has been corrected, with the right one like this one is.

Cool, thanks. I figured you didn't realize that was happening. Reading it now...

 

[Obadiah]

Here is the flip side of this issue, from a site called ex-pastors.com.

A short paragraph about why Pastors leave the ministry -

Most pastors are overworked.

90% of pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week and 50% feel unable to meet the demands of the job.

And 70% of pastors feel grossly underpaid.

Most pastors feel unprepared.

90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the ministry demands and 90% of pastors said the ministry was completely different than what they thought it would be like before they entered the ministry.

Many pastors struggle with depression and discouragement.

70% of pastors constantly fight depression and 50% of pastors feel so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.

Wait, this is huge. Let’s pause here for a moment.

This means that half of the 1,700 or so pastors who leave the ministry each month have no other way of making a living. Their education and experience is wrapped up solely in the work of the ministry.

So, not only do pastors struggle with their choice to leave ministry, they have to worry about how they are going to feed their families.

Speaking of families, most pastor’s families are negatively impacted.

80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. 80% of spouses feel the pastor is overworked and feel left out and under-appreciated by church members.

Many pastors are lonely.

70% do not have someone they consider a close friend and 40% report serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month.

And then there is this: read more at ex-pastors.com


http://www.expastors.com/why-do-so-many-pastors-leave-the-ministry-the-facts-will-shock-you/



JLB

The pastor I talked about above that is now decided to be an atheist used to talk about these statistics. I always knew his talking about them was a cry for help. I tried to encourage him when I could, but I always felt pretty inadequate. When the church board liason asked me to resign from my paid job as their sound engineer because I couldn't accomplish the impossible task of making a contemporary song sound like an old time hymn (the last straw for me with that church) he was really ticked off about that and I think he saw the fact that they were allowed to do that as another failure on his part. It was only a few months after I left that he told them he had lost his faith in God and given up. Of course, they fired him too and in that case they had no other choice. (He also acknowledges that this time they did make the only right choice they could have made.) Shortly after that he started promoting atheism, and just now I saw where he is up early this morning mocking some Christians on a Christian site for their trust in God.

Is this his fault? Yeah. I've had bad times and given up on churches in the past too, but I never blamed God for it or started actively working against God. But it's also partly the fault of this particular church for their "good ol' boy" network of board members who they keep recycling between being elders and deacons so that the same old cronies (many of whom clearly have little faith in God and even less idea of how to seek and follow the guidance of the spirit in running their church) stay in charge forever. Anyone that challenges them is ostracized. This is one of the things that wore him down until one day he just gave up. Sadly, it seems he wrongly gave up on God as well.

Then I read about people who adamantly demand that pastors should work in ministry for free and on top of the 60+ hours per week that consumes, they should be happy to work at another secular job for an additional 40 to 60 hours per week to financially support themselves and their families. If this is the way it's to be, I think it would be better to just line up all of our pastors and shoot them to put them out of their misery. I certainly know if I had to work 120 hours per week just to get by the same as all my neighbors that only work 40 hours for the same things or more, I'd certainly want someone to do me the favor of putting me out of my misery.

 

[Obadiah]

And with that rant finished, I've gotta go back to work. Se y'all in a little while.

 

[JLB]

The pastor I talked about above that is now decided to be an atheist used to talk about these statistics. I always knew his talking about them was a cry for help. I tried to encourage him when I could, but I always felt pretty inadequate. When the church board liason asked me to resign from my paid job as their sound engineer because I couldn't accomplish the impossible task of making a contemporary song sound like an old time hymn (the last straw for me with that church) he was really ticked off about that and I think he saw the fact that they were allowed to do that as another failure on his part. It was only a few months after I left that he told them he had lost his faith in God and given up. Of course, they fired him too and in that case they had no other choice. (He also acknowledges that this time they did make the only right choice they could have made.) Shortly after that he started promoting atheism, and just now I saw where he is up early this morning mocking some Christians on a Christian site for their trust in God.

Is this his fault? Yeah. I've had bad times and given up on churches in the past too, but I never blamed God for it or started actively working against God. But it's also partly the fault of this particular church for their "good ol' boy" network of board members who they keep recycling between being elders and deacons so that the same old cronies (many of whom clearly have little faith in God and even less idea of how to seek and follow the guidance of the spirit in running their church) stay in charge forever. Anyone that challenges them is ostracized. This is one of the things that wore him down until one day he just gave up. Sadly, it seems he wrongly gave up on God as well.

Then I read about people who adamantly demand that pastors should work in ministry for free and on top of the 60+ hours per week that consumes, they should be happy to work at another secular job for an additional 40 to 60 hours per week to financially support themselves and their families. If this is the way it's to be, I think it would be better to just line up all of our pastors and shoot them to put them out of their misery. I certainly know if I had to work 120 hours per week just to get by the same as all my neighbors that only work 40 hours for the same things or more, I'd certainly want someone to do me the favor of putting me out of my misery.

Thanks for sharing this here with us, as many need to hear this from people who have been on the inside of the inner workings of a Church Ministry, and see what goes on behind the scenes.


Be Blessed, and know you are God's precious son, not because you go to a building called a church, but because you have been born of God by His Spirit, and the Spirit of Christ dwells within you.


JLB

 

[smaller]

I would be very careful about passing this kind of judgement on anyone who doesn't attend traditional church services in the way you perceive it should be done. The verse you posted is no doubt true for some, but I've looked into this a lot in the last few years since I live in an area that has one of the largest percentages of people who do not go to regular church services but yet claim Christianity. Most of them have reasons that are very different than what you are suggesting here.

Sadly I've found myself no longer attending church either. It's not because I have abandoned my faith in God. As a matter of fact, it may very well be stronger now than it was, say, even a year ago. It's because the leadership of the church I was at was making too many very unbiblical decisions and when one too many of those decisions affected me directly I left and never went back. Since then, the pastor has even declared himself an atheist and is actively promoting atheism on the internet now. I think these kind of things justify my decision to leave that church as being more Godly than the idea that my lack of attending indicates that I have abandoned my faith.

And yes, I've looked around for a new church, but my choices in a small town are pretty limited and it's just not practical for me to get involved in a church that is halfway across the county. The local ones that I've looked into all seem to have the same problems that I left, so there really isn't any sense in getting involved and attached to one of them just to run into the same old problems and get hurt by them again.

I would love to be part of a church that truly uses their time together to worship God in the way scripture tells us to worship him rather than spending 90% of their time worrying about other less important things like politics, legalism, the color of their carpeting, and who's sleeping with who. They need to stop conducting "worship" services that are about 20% worship (if any at all) and 80% vain rituals and warmed over sermons saying the same thing I've heard 100 times before over and over again until the hardest thing I do all week is trying to force myself to stay awake through yet another boring sermon on the same old topics. On a really sad note, the best sermons I've ever heard were from the guy that's now declared himself an atheist. I still don't know what to make of that! But our churches need to start focusing on actual praise and worship of God, and put the majority of their efforts into that. Some do. But unfortunately there aren't enough of them around and a lot of Christians do not live close enough to one of them. So they simply don't attend anymore.

I would suggest that most people who no longer attend church but still have faith in God are not failing to attend because of what's described in 1 Tim 4:1, but rather because they are simply unable to find a church where there is enough emphasis on praising and worshiping God to make it worth dedicating themselves to it.

Good synopsis Obadiah. It is difficult for any groups to stay cohesive in the long run. The church is a compilation of sinners, after all is said and done.

A dear friend of mine, a very Godly man, a true pastor by heart, left various churches himself, and could not form a cohesive church of his own. He's still wandering. Still traveling to other countries and doing missionary work. But himself, does not belong to any particular group. I happened to leave his home church, though I am still connected to most of the former membership, because he and his wife had different sights on OSAS, him no, she yes. It was at that point that I knew I just had to roll up my own sleeves, open the scrolls and do my own studies on the matters. And landed on YES for OSAS. Not that it is a litmus test, nor would I say that anyone else has to be there to be a believer, but, this is perhaps a minor example of what happens.

Another friend of mine, again, still a pastor, a very sincere Godly believer, fervent, tried a few years ago to arrange some kind of a home church system that was only praise and worship oriented, and knew that the only way that could be done, at least in his mind, was to abandon teachings altogether, because from his own lifetime experience in the ministry, that these splits would eventually come to play, and he thought that by avoiding teaching altogether and only focusing on praise and worship, that it might adhere/be cohesive. He asked me if my wife and I would be involved by sponsoring such a collective in my area, in my home. I said no. Why? Even in "song" we reflect our teachings, so teachings are unavoidable, even in praise and worship.

I could get into a lot of various analysis about these matters, but, I might liken it to more of a sign of the time, that believers do want and desire Truth, and nothing but the whole unvarnished Truth.

And when we see that Truth is not to be found in man or collective, or eventually even in ourselves, frustrations come, by nature.

We simply are not Perfect, but we all HOPE for same. That IS the Christian Hope.

 

[Blake]

I haven't read the article yet, but I'm about to. Just wanted to chime in with my thoughts on church, those who attend, and those who don't.

I'll start with a man I know named Richard.

Richard is a maintenance man for an apartment complex, a handyman, do it yourself kind of guy, chain smoker, coffee drinker, a little rough around the edges and loud, but completely honest about who he is, and a delight to be around. I met him when I was working with some clients of mine with mental retardation and behavioral disabilities, because he had struck up a friendship with one of my clients, we'll call him PJ.

Richard's speech was enough to shake up most religious folks. It was a little seasoned, habitually, from being a former inmate and dealer. Those things alone would have been more than enough to discredit him in the eyes of many. But something in my own spirit bore witness to his. For the year or so that I was there, I'd seen with my own eyes how he went completely above and beyond his expectations with some of the tenants there. There were (and are) a few widows there who live off of HUD and other such assistance and don't have very much, and I got introduced to them, as well.

When PJ's wheelchair frame broke, Richard welded it. When that failed, and our work agency was in-between all the bureaucracy of getting him a new one, Richard found him one. I saw him take discarded furniture out of the dumpsters, refinish them, and give them to people in the complex who had a need. When he noticed that my tire was looking rough, he looked all over the place for one for me, and even though one never turned up I appreciated that he had tried. See, Richard was always out looking for ways to help somebody.

One morning I was coming to work and I had brought Richard and I a coffee and some breakfast. Being completely unable to contain my curiosity, I asked him about his faith. We had a great long conversation about it in which I could never share all the details, but although it was every bit of my intention to edify him and build him up and bid him to attend church with me from time to time, I found out that this man had a very unique relationship with Jesus, and it was a genuine one. Until him, I never believed that true confessing Christians had any "salt" to them if they weren't churched, and if I'm honest I still struggle with it, but I do know for a fact there are some Richards out in the world who put most church folks I know to shame in how they live their life. The thing about it is, church folk are better at minding their tongue, keeping their conversations cleaner, wearing nice church masks that make any sort of struggle seem too good for them -- but I just don't often see them getting their hands dirty in the world, loving on people just because, giving of themselves til it hurts. And then I see men like Richard who don't go to church, don't talk perfectly, have rough edges, but practice what Jesus called "true religion" in the Bible: love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Richard pops in at church every once in awhile, gives me a big bear hug and goes on about his life. I pray for him, I bet he prays for me, too. To a lot of people Richard is lukewarm, or false, or an apostate -- to me he is a saintly man, who is true to himself, not making excuses for who he is as he presses on from faith to faith and glory to glory. In fact, we had church several times together as we visited with one another and we talked about God. On a couple of occasions, the Lord made His presence known to us, and we wept. We both did everything we could at that apartment complex to make Christ known. Heaven will have its share of Richards.

Now, I go to a church that I don't agree with everything being preached. I love my pastor to death, he is so sincere, and devout, selfless, loving, and anointed -- but theologically I'm not always in the same corner. My church is very conservative, so much so that I have to tip toe around town to get myself a beer, lest I be judged. I don't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture and our church is very much so in support of that. I don't think geographical Israel is the apple of God's eye, but the church is His Israel. My church believes the opposite. But despite the theology of it all, I go there, because I can't find a better alternative. My church feeds me and inspires me. I still have Orthodox leanings, but I doubt I will ever return to that world. But that's neither here nor there.

Here's my bottom line: I know that there are strong enough Christians in the world who, although they might not fit neatly into some of our ideas about what a Christian should be, get along just fine on their own. I don't think we should neglect gathering together, as Paul looked negatively upon it, but gathering together doesn't necessarily have to be at a Sunday sermon I don't suppose. Me? I'm not strong enough to fly solo. Without church I start to grow cold. The corporate worship and the sermons help me and feed me and I need that. But I don't shake my finger at those who don't come. I invite them a lot. Sometimes I bring a little church to them. If I had it my way, we'd all have a church we could go to, but that isn't always the reality of things.

 

[reba]

Churches ( the building down the street) would/could be great if they were not filled with those people..
I too have stayed away from church...for all the problems listed here.. I miss it.
I can tell ya how it would be if i started going...

Who amongst .us are not one of 'those people'

Being a member of this forum for a few years now .. i see the same things as in churches... This place is a group of people we all have problems of some sort..
Looking back, remembering 'dad's churches' arrogance was a big problem... some one always KNOWING more then the next guy.. We have all seen it in our lives.. in school at work... the guys who like having the 'little people' around so they feel big ...The backbiters... Smile at you give that cold hug then hit the prayer chain to talk about ya..

In the 'church group' not so much here hardly at all here .. i see the why God's Word says
1Co_14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.

 

[JLB]

It's getting time for the new church movement.

Yes, It's called the Church that Jesus builds... and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.


Wouldn't it be great to get back to what the Early Church walked in?

As long as false teachers keep the people of God, blinded with such nonsense as:

• The baptism of the Holy Spirit was just for the Apostles.
• There are no more apostles and Prophets
• We are baptized in the Holy Spirit when we are baptized in water.
• Healing and miracles are of the devil.
• Tongues are of the devil.

11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
Ephesians 4:11-16


JLB

 

[JLB]

Churches ( the building down the street) would/could be great if they were not filled with those people..

Reba for President!

 

[reba]

The early church had problems kinda the same as to day.. people