(Probably) Back to Square One

So that church we've been attending since May?

Meh.

Don't get me wrong. It started out very good - or at least promising. They go through the bible, line by line, verse by verse. The pastor studies with commentaries, languages, and other big and ridiculous books. The congregants were very welcoming. But here's what's started to go downhill:

One of my least grievous complaints is the length of the service, and that they place a strange importance on the music, but they don't make it energetic enough that you want to be involved, nor consider it reverent enough to make you stand. They tell you to do as the Lord leads - and so 9 out of 10 people sit.

Somewhere in the middle of my list is that the church is in the process of finding a new location, but hasn't (to the best of my knowledge) involved the congregation in any way other than telling them where they might show up next week. I realize churches do things differently, but to me, buying a building is a big enough thing that you might want to at least inform some folks.

But my top two complaints are these: First off, somehow the pastor manages to take preaching line by line, verse by verse, and inject all sorts of fluff and things that don't belong there. You can almost make a drinking game out of it. Read verse. Tell humorous or inspirational life story. Spout off some intelligent sounding fact. Make jab at other religion/unchurched. Make a point and reiterate five times. Next verse. I'm not learning anything, but I am making some pretty dandy grocery lists.

But the big complaint, the one I'm finding harder and harder to overlook (because I can overlook a lot of things) is that the church has somehow managed to make me feel like a terrible, terrible Christian and in general, the church's "better than you" attitude.

Now, I don't consider myself a holier-than-thou person who has it all together. Far from it. I sin, I fail, I try to do better. But week after week, what we hear from the sermon and the other people is that as soon as you get saved, you should be offended by everything. Now, I'm also not saying that there's not a lot of stuff out there that we're better off not watching. It's just this weird attitude that you pick up on after a while. They think they're way better Christians if they don't listen to any secular music, read any pop books or watch any tv. They wouldn't outright tell you you're a bad person - but that's what the sermon is for. Almost every week, the pastor makes a jab at democrats, catholics, or unsaved people ... and then says how great God's grace is and we should get people saved. But it just strikes me as funny for how negatively they speak of non-christians, that they should want to interact with them at all. Yeah, they're *those* Christians that you can't actually have conversations with. Also, they seem to think Matt's a charity case because he hates his job.

I'm sorry, I just don't think that "When I got saved I gave up everything I was, quit reading comic books, quit drawing, quit listening to music, watching tv or movies and hanging around my secular friends - you should get saved too because God is great!" is really going to hook, line, sinker anyone. I was apathetic to all this at best until I realized that, man, if for some reason I was in a position where someone was interested in going to church with me - I couldn't take them, because I think that church might turn them off from Christianity as a whole.

So I think I'm back to square one. Googling for churches. Either churches out here really suck, or we just magically stumbled on good ones as I was growing up. I don't remember it being this hard.

But I just want to say that, man ... I'm sorry. I promise not all Christians are as jerky as a lot of what you run across. I know sometimes it's hard to believe, but some of us really do CARE and don't just want to convert you like a notch on the belt.