Stories from my old Protestant Church

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My family was not very “churchy” growing up - but that probably had something to do with our experience in what was a nominally Methodist church, but really probably had more in common with non-denominational “fundamentalist” churches.

We went to a revival meeting there. It was the absolute scariest thing I ever experienced - I was 5 or 6 at the time. Altar calls, yelling preacher, telling us we were all going to die and go to Hell, etc.

A short time afterward we found that most of the members were also actively involved in the KKK (we were living in very, very rural Mississippi at the time.) That was the time we quit being involved with them at all.

My in-laws go to a non-denominational church that meets in a movie theatre. Last year DH and I attended their Christmas Eve service and then Mass in the morning. The people were very nice, but I spent half the time wondering why listening to the pastor discuss war for over an hour (instead of the Lord’s birth) was an “improvement” over Mass (MIL is a fallen-away Catholic.) We don’t intend to attend there again.
 
Jeremy, I love your conversion story!!

I have been in all sorts of loopy churches!

I was married to an assembly of God pastor’s kid. We were visiting a local church about 15 yrs ago, and the pastor was consumed with his wife’s end stage cancer. Naturally. Anyone would be. I was very disturbed that during the service we prayed for her healing (nothing wrong with that), and took a collection so that she could go see BENNY HINN for her healing of her cancer. She was probably in her 50s. God bless them. But really, my heart went out to this poor Christian lady, who was not allowed to accept her death, did not trust in everlasting life enough, but trusted in Benny Hinn.

Of course, that just made me not AG anymore. It took several more years to become Catholic.

Another telling story, toward the very end of my prot days…
I was an avid bible reader, and student. I knew scripture as good as the pastors. WHy? Because I loved it. I just do. I still do. And I have a knack for memorization…
I was so hungry for truth that I thought my next step was to buy a “systematic theology.”
(LOL)
I asked my pastor after service one day (he’s one of those national radio preachers)
I asked him what “systematic theology” he would recommend. I had a few that i had already reasearched, so brought them up in my question, to show him i had done my homework… His actual response to my question; HE LAUGHED!
He couldn’t recommend a systematic theology. WHY? Because he was teaching HIS OWN systematic theology!!!

I didn’t realize then that my real question was, “What is truth, and where can I find it?”
I discovered the REAL Systematic Theology in the Catholic Church! None other can hold a candle to the Magisterium!!!

Whee!!! I love being Catholic!
 
jonbhorton said:
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I recall, vividly, a time when a friend of a friend jumped up and just started sprinting around church during the sermon. Pastor stops and starts yelling “Amen! Hallelujah!” etc while dude continues to run around the church building inside.

Total chaos. )
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I experienced that too. My former Brother in law was the pastor. It was Christmas EVE! In the midst of that my 7 yr olds were given their “first” “communion.”

I was in the broom closet feeding my 3 month old.

I was livid.

What the hay, all roads lead to ROME!! Amen! Hallelujah!😃
 
manualman said:
Almost, though it’s probably not a story that will give you warm fuzzies. I went to college at UW Madison and attended the Newmann Center / parish there (late 80’s).
  1. Mass started with “In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier…”
  2. A woman wore vestments and clearly considered herself a concelebrant (gave homilies, extended hand and mouthed words of consecration, held the chalice at the great amen…)
  3. The priest attempted consecration on leavened bread obviously containing honey and it was crumbly as could possibly be.
  4. Every participant was a ‘eucharistic minister’ for the person in line behind him/her.
  5. The polished concrete floor around the altar was coverd with crumbs afterwards (good thing in restrospect that it was an invalid material for a host, eh?).
  6. No recognizable catholic art, statues, windows, images. Plain concrete interior oriented to make people look at each other.
    (btw, I’m told the new bishop rhetorically fashioned a whip and drove these rascals out, so don’t assume the Newmann Center is a trove of heretics these days, I really haven’t been back since)
    I was young and ignorant enough not to be able to articulate what I knew was wrong, but I very nearly left the Church for a vibrant and faithful evangelical group. What stopped me was finding an honest catholic parish nearby and seeing the contrast between the Eucharist there and the grape juice and crackers shared at the non-denom community my friends went to. Turns out that even Kumbaya catholics can even recognize Jesus sometimes! 😉
But a lesson learned here relevant to you is that you will find bad eggs in the catholic community too. We just enjoy the security of having someone beyond our immediate pastor to look to for reliable answers to life’s big questions. Oh, and some rather important sacraments too. Welcome home!
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I attended RCIA in another “UW”- Newman Center Campus in the early 90’s ( it is since MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better I understand!) and took away: birth control is better than abortion, maybe someday priests can marry, someday women may be priests, oh and don’t worry about the sign of the cross and other pius gestures…teh church is “moving away from them…” YIKES:eek:.
Wasn’t scarred for life, even the prostestant convert I was knew something was amiss…Oh, and I never went to confession before I was confirmed either 🙂 It’s all good now 🙂
 
graceandglory said:
I experienced that too. My former Brother in law was the pastor. It was Christmas EVE! In the midst of that my 7 yr olds were given their “first” “communion.”

I was in the broom closet feeding my 3 month old.

I was livid.

What the hay, all roads lead to ROME!! Amen! Hallelujah!😃
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Ahh… 🙂 Wow. I would have sprinted out the door!
 
Around the beginning of 2010, I left the Catholic Church in order to be with a gal who was pretty staunchly anti-Catholic. She attends a Methodist church, and I became a member of that church for around 8 months, until things finally broke down between she and I (as well they should…we talked of marriage, but she was obviously very much not the one for me…still makes me cringe some days, how eager I was to throw away the beautiful Truth I’d been raised with…anyway, I digress).

During that time, we attended the contemporary service of that church; one thing I recall that still sticks in my craw was a sermon that the pastor gave one day, in which he told of a personal anecdote about a man and his young son coming into the church he was working in, and looking for a priest so that his boy could have his First Confession. Our sterling pastor’s response? “Yeah, I’m a priest.”

Seems like the guy in the story was very uneducated about the Catholic Faith in general, if he was taken in that easily, but I still grind my teeth a little when I remember the titters that went through the congregation at that story. “Oh, our clever little pastor just utterly misled a complete stranger who was seriously looking for a Sacrament for his son…praise be God!”

Grr. :mad: Needless to say, after I left the place and ran home practically screaming into the arms of my beautiful Church, I did not return the calls the pastor left, wondering where I’d been…I didn’t talk to anyone there, just up and left, and remembered to call in to the office a few months later to ask them to stop sending me mail.
 
Lochias said:
Around the beginning of 2010, I left the Catholic Church in order to be with a gal who was pretty staunchly anti-Catholic. She attends a Methodist church, and I became a member of that church for around 8 months, until things finally broke down between she and I (as well they should…we talked of marriage, but she was obviously very much not the one for me…still makes me cringe some days, how eager I was to throw away the beautiful Truth I’d been raised with…anyway, I digress).

During that time, we attended the contemporary service of that church; one thing I recall that still sticks in my craw was a sermon that the pastor gave one day, in which he told of a personal anecdote about a man and his young son coming into the church he was working in, and looking for a priest so that his boy could have his First Confession. Our sterling pastor’s response? “Yeah, I’m a priest.”

Seems like the guy in the story was very uneducated about the Catholic Faith in general, if he was taken in that easily, but I still grind my teeth a little when I remember the titters that went through the congregation at that story. “Oh, our clever little pastor just utterly misled a complete stranger who was seriously looking for a Sacrament for his son…praise be God!”

Grr. :mad: Needless to say, after I left the place and ran home practically screaming into the arms of my beautiful Church, I did not return the calls the pastor left, wondering where I’d been…I didn’t talk to anyone there, just up and left, and remembered to call in to the office a few months later to ask them to stop sending me mail.
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): That’s so dishonest. Who could follow a leader who is full of such malice and dishonesty?
 
About a year before we left our previous church, we had the pleasure of listening to a sermon on the feeding of the 5000. It turns out, we were told, that the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 was… sharing!:bigyikes: I wanted to run out of there. I was no Bible scholar, but even I could recognize the lie. Apparently, this is some new theory making its way around. I have run into one other person who heard a similar sermon. Anybody else run into this?
 
Newsy said:
About a year before we left our previous church, we had the pleasure of listening to a sermon on the feeding of the 5000. It turns out, we were told, that the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 was… sharing!:bigyikes: I wanted to run out of there. I was no Bible scholar, but even I could recognize the lie. Apparently, this is some new theory making its way around. I have run into one other person who heard a similar sermon. Anybody else run into this?
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I didn’t run into this but I did sit through several bad sermons.

One in which the lay minister informed us Jesus is just a myth and he wasn’t a real person.

One where the minister informed us that anyone who wasn’t a card carrying member of his congregation was a waste of pew space.

One in which the minister attacked Oprah instead of… you know, teaching us something about the Bible and how we can be better Christians…

Strangely I have yet to hear a bad homily. I’m sure they exist but our good Heavenly Father has spared me so far.
 
The problem I found in my Church was that there was no really questioning the Pastor. I mean he literally could preach and interpret things how ever he wanted. I really hated when he said he was going to Start wearing a Rosary and Praying it but he said he would Leave the “Holy Mary Mother of God Pray for us and at the hour of our death” out of it. He really was pushing the false teaching of Worshiping Her. I always knew in my heart even before I came to the cc that we Honored her and were asking for her to intercede for us. To be honest all the Crazy things aside the treatment of the CC and especially these little comments really prompted The Lord to move in my heart and cause me to leave, I even broke my ex pastor the news the other day that I wont be attending his Candle Light Service due to the complete different theological difference we have… Now some of the other memebers of the Church have started commenting on my Facebook page about Things I post relating to the Catholic Church…IT is gettting almost comical at this point.😛
 
nickybr38 said:
): That’s so dishonest. Who could follow a leader who is full of such malice and dishonesty?
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I’m not sure I’d call the guy “malicious” as such…'cept that there was no way he’d be able to get around the fact that he outright lied to the man and his son. That’s in and of itself a malicious sort of lie, methinks. The pastor was honestly a nice guy otherwise…truly unfortunate, if he thought he had to do what he did for “the greater good.” A horrible example to set, especially in a Christian context.
 
Newsy said:
About a year before we left our previous church, we had the pleasure of listening to a sermon on the feeding of the 5000. It turns out, we were told, that the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 was… sharing!:bigyikes: I wanted to run out of there. I was no Bible scholar, but even I could recognize the lie. Apparently, this is some new theory making its way around. I have run into one other person who heard a similar sermon. Anybody else run into this?
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Yes, this happened a year or two ago at our parish. I believe it was our Deacon, however I just called my husband at work and he said he thinks it was a visiting priest. What I do remember though was thinking at the time “wow, so this is what that scripture meant” (as my husband was squeezing my hand so tight I thought it would explode) Needless to say once we left mass my husband vented for awhile! And I never let on to my husband that I was buying it LOL
 
Newsy said:
About a year before we left our previous church, we had the pleasure of listening to a sermon on the feeding of the 5000. It turns out, we were told, that the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 was… sharing!:bigyikes: I wanted to run out of there. I was no Bible scholar, but even I could recognize the lie. Apparently, this is some new theory making its way around. I have run into one other person who heard a similar sermon. Anybody else run into this?
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I have not heard the “sharing” explanation, but in a book study at a Methodist church, someone (not the pastor) explained that the feeding of the 5000 really began very small, as all the “miracle” stories did, and was blown way out of proportion as legend replaced reality. What happened was this: Jesus sat down with a few close friends and shared a (natural, boring) meal with them and preached a sermon. On recollecting this intimate gathering later on, the disciples embellished the story so that it wouldn’t be forgotten. 😉
 
Positive story: I became acquainted with many loving, sincere Christians who were involved in my life and encouraged me.

Not-so-positive story: I went into the kitchen to clean up after coffee hour in a Reformed church one day and saw a group of girls pretending to get drunk on the grape juice left over from communion…I realized it was just Welch’s, not the Lord, but it still repulsed me.
 
where do I even begin? my old church is I guess has Charismatic overtones because there was a lot of “holy spirit told me this or that” and people falling on the floor and rolling around as if they needed exorcism:eek:. Then there was certain “prayer warriors” who “saw” things around people like auras or colors, or people claiming that they were “prophets” or “seers”:rolleyes: Last I heard, “prayer warrior” group was going around the church and waiving flags while praying. :rolleyes::confused:
 
I attended a non-denominational worship service this past fall with my my BIL and SIL while visiting them, and she attended Mass with me afterwards (they are ex-Catholics and we negotiated the church attendance on Sunday). I was appalled to see people drinking coffee during the service, and the Minister was “dressed down”. Apparently this has become quite the thing in some of the non-denom. churches lately.

Now when I was growing up, if my Protestant grandparents took me to church with them, we wore our Sunday best and everything was very solemn and formal. The Minister wore a suit and the choir was robed. We would never have dreamed of drinking coffee or anything during the service!

The service was in a school gym (not unusual, even for Catholics) and the musicians were contemporary–and very good. But the service only consisted of some praise and worship music and a long sermon, and a little bit of prayer–very little. I left feeling very unsatisfied and I was glad to get to Mass, which was lovely, prayerful, worshipful, and the priest gave a first-rate homily. My SIL was impressed that the priest could say so much in so little time, comparatively. The whole atmosphere was different. I just cannot get a handle on worshipping God in church while sipping on a cup of brew. There is a lot of complaining about how casual we Catholics have become at Mass, but these people have taken it to a whole new level. My staunch Protestant grandparents would have been appalled.

BTW, the sermon was on avoiding the trappings of religiosity–that is, making a show of a being religious on the outside while being corrupt on the inside. I can understand that, but I don’t think drinking a cup of coffee during a church service is going to solve that problem;)
 
I went to a little non demoninational worship service (close to home which made it convenient :D) and it was a husband wife team. It was held in a local school.

She was talking about how the Holy Ghost told her what to write as a worship song and look how well it fitted with what her husband the preacher just said.

Do we look stupid? They sleep together, do you think they may have talked to one another during the week? It was so lame I left at intermission. And yes it was intermission where you could buy a cup of coffee and donuts. They called it a donation I think.

Sheesh. :bigyikes:
 
KimberlyAnn0218 said:
Ahh… 🙂 Wow. I would have sprinted out the door!
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I had just flown in from across the country. Arrived in time for their 7 pm “service” to be ushered to the vacuum closet to feed my 3 mo old.

I guess you could say I was righteously “livid.”:rolleyes:
 
Lochias said:
I’m not sure I’d call the guy “malicious” as such…'cept that there was no way he’d be able to get around the fact that he outright lied to the man and his son. That’s in and of itself a malicious sort of lie, methinks. The pastor was honestly a nice guy otherwise…truly unfortunate, if he thought he had to do what he did for “the greater good.” A horrible example to set, especially in a Christian context.
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TRuth is relative for many pastors and denominations. For just about every evangelical, I think. What is truth? Is there or isn’t there ONE TRUTH? ONe holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church?

THat seems to be the clincher.
 
CB_Catholic said:
I
The service was in a school gym (not unusual, even for Catholics) and the musicians were contemporary–and very good. But the service only consisted of some praise and worship music and a long sermon, and a little bit of prayer–very little.😉
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After I made the decision that I was going to be Catholic (revert), I thought it best to keep my children out of it. I didn’t want to shake their little Awana, Sunday School, Bible camp world. 😃 I even told my new priest my thoughts, thinking he would commend me for being so selfless, and not wanting to cause any stress for my kids. LOL! He practically scolded me!
And you know, I didn’t quite agree with him.
Until I took them back to the prot church we had been attending (IT was a Foursquare).
The pastor preached that day about PRAYER. I had my bible, and had a difficult time paying attention, as I could learn more just reading scripture than hearing some guy talk on and on about the topic of PRAYER. No prayer, just yapping ABOUT prayer. I WANTED TO PRAY!
The pastor ended his hour long sermon with a quickie little closing prayer, and invitation to Christ. Then we sang a song and it was over.

I felt so ripped off. Church is where you go to PRAY!
I have never gone back to a protestant church, not once in over seven years.
The Mass is scripture and PRAYER from beginning to the end!!!
How could I have ever left in the first place??? Intimacy with Christ is what I was seeking, and I had it all along!
 
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