Sorry for three in a row. Hope this is OK to post.
I thought it might be interesting for you to hear exactly why we (ex-evangelical Protestants) hopped to four churches in thirteen years.
Years 1-2: We attended a Christian and Missionary Alliance “church plant,” which means that we and several other families were trying to start up a C & MA church. It was a lot of work, and at the time, we had two small children. We tithed approx 25% of our income to this effort, and my husband and I were involved at least five nights/days a week in this church, mainly in children’s and youth ministries.
But the church plant failed, miserably. It dwindled to only three families, and the two other families didn’t agree with our ideas about how the church could continue, so they told us that we should leave, and we did.
Years 3-4: We attended a Reformed Church in America (Calvinist). This liturgical church was a stark contrast to the free-wheeling C & MA church plant. We learned all about sacraments and TULIP and Providence and we saw our pastor wear vestments for the first time in our lives. We were very involved in various youth and children’s ministries.
Then the bombshell dropped. One Saturday night, we received a call from one of the elders (a female) informing us that the pastor had been fired. We were stunned and asked why. She said that “it” had been going on for six years, and that they had finally succeeded in getting rid of him. She wouldn’t tell us what “it” was.
We really liked that pastor! But we trusted the leadership and stuck it out…until they hired a woman pastor. That’s when we left. Both my husband and I believed that it was unBiblical for a church to have a woman pastor. We informed the elders and left amicably, although they probably shook their heads at our old-fashioned ideas.
Years 5-6: We went back to my childhood church, the church where my husband and I spent our teenaged years, the church where we were married, a Conference Baptist Church.
It had changed a lot. It was definitely not the church of our childhood and teenaged days.
We tried to fit in. The two worship service choices were “Contemporary” and “Rock.” No traditional music. No hymnals. You had to audition to be in the choir. Only professional musicians played the piano.
I worked with VBS, and chaired VBS one year, and had a terrible time finding people willing to help me. (In previous years, they had hired a “professional VBS team” to run their VBS, so they didn’t have to do much of anything). What a switch from the years that I grew up there and many ladies and many of the men and almost all the teenagers volunteered to help the whole week!
I started a drama ministry with the teenagers, and that’s what did us in. The pastor’s wife accused me of taking over her “practice time” in the sanctuary (I asked to use the sanctuary ONE week). She was…well, the word rhymes with witchy. I couldn’t help but wish that she would try some of her nasty tricks OUTSIDE of the church walls, because then non-Christian people would slap her silly and put a stop to her behavior. (Christian people, including me, were too nice to her and therefore enabled her to continue to be nasty and self-centered.)
But the day after the teenagers presented their drama, we left that church. We talked to a deacon and explained that if the pastor couldn’t control his own wife, then how on earth could he pastor a church? (I believe the passage about the pastor having one wife and managing his family well is in one of the letters to St. Timothy.)
Years 7-13: We attended an Evangelical Free Church in America. I’ve talked about this before on this forum, so I’ll just summarize by saying that the church kicked us out after we served for several years in children’s ministries. They had a tribunal, a woman pastor cooked up a stew of lies, people we had never met and who had never met us believed her, and we were told to leave the church. It was cruel, capricious, and I had nightmares for a year about being chased, tortured, and killed by these people.
Our daughter told us that she had always known that the church was evil and that we never should have gone there. She still doesn’t attend a church. Pray for her.
After the ousting and the accompanying shunning, I didn’t open my Bible for over a year because I didn’t trust it anymore. The pastors at that church had used the Bible to justify their heinous accusations against us. How could I know that I wasn’t also twisting the Bible into something evil? So I didn’t read it.
I told my husband that I would never join a church again unless a church wooed us like a lover woos a bride.
We prayed that God would lead us to a group of Christians who were truly serious about serving God.
He answered that prayer. It took us two years to recognize the answer and then we said, “God, surely you don’t mean to lead us into the CATHOLIC CHURCH, do You?!”
Yes, He did!
Please keep in mind that we didn’t just start attending each church. For several weeks or months, we “visited” churches, attending their Sunday schools and worship services and often their midweek prayer services (that’s where you find out what the church is REALLY made of–the Wednesday night prayer service!). Our daughters visited their Sunday school classes and clubs and youth groups.
This was extremely hard. Imagine dating someone different every week for weeks.
Church hopping is not all about meeting needs. It’s about survival as Christians.
Protestants know in their heart of hearts that we are supposed to be part of the Church, but they don’t know exactly what that means. So they keep searching and keep getting disappointed and disillusioned, and many will end up leaving the church altogether and retaining only a vague memory of what it means to be a Christian. It’s so sad.
