Visiting Other Churches
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 5:57 pm
One thing I remember about growing up in the CoC is the constant nagging and pressuring to invite your friends to church with you...if you didn't bring any friends to church with you, people would ask questions and make you feel like you weren't doing a good job at "bringing people to Christ". But of course, if any of your friends invited you to their church, you always had to tell them NO.
This always bothered me. I dated a couple girls in high school, and both of them came to church with me a few times. They stopped coming once I was never allowed to go to their church, and of course people advised me that I should move on from them if they weren't willing to "come to Christ". I brought two of my baptist friends with me once during vacation bible school. One of the elder's wives sat right there and started bashing baptists and their beliefs right there in front of them...I was mortified, and they obviously never came back. Yet when I was invited to their church, I always had to tell them no.
I always heard the excuse, "We don't miss our church for another church." yet we expected everyone else to miss their church to come to ours. I wasn't even allowed to go to any of my friends' churches for a revival, special service or vacation bible school, even though the time didn't interfere with our church times. "They don't teach the truth!" I was told then. I always wondered how we supposedly knew so much about what these other denominations believed if we were never allowed to go to their church...of course in later years I would come to find out that the majority of things I was taught about denominations were either flat out lies or exaggerations to make them sound bad.
Did anyone else experience this? I was always embarrassed enough whenever any friend of mine came to our church (that should have told me something right there...I knew at an early age that the COC was strange...), but then I always hated having to turn them down when I was invited to their church. And I was expected to tell them, "Your church doesn't teach the truth, I'm just trying to teach you the truth!" Yeah, it never happened...I just told them that my parents wouldn't allow me to go to their church, and yet the CoC wonders why people rarely brings their friends from outside of "the one true church" with them...
This always bothered me. I dated a couple girls in high school, and both of them came to church with me a few times. They stopped coming once I was never allowed to go to their church, and of course people advised me that I should move on from them if they weren't willing to "come to Christ". I brought two of my baptist friends with me once during vacation bible school. One of the elder's wives sat right there and started bashing baptists and their beliefs right there in front of them...I was mortified, and they obviously never came back. Yet when I was invited to their church, I always had to tell them no.
I always heard the excuse, "We don't miss our church for another church." yet we expected everyone else to miss their church to come to ours. I wasn't even allowed to go to any of my friends' churches for a revival, special service or vacation bible school, even though the time didn't interfere with our church times. "They don't teach the truth!" I was told then. I always wondered how we supposedly knew so much about what these other denominations believed if we were never allowed to go to their church...of course in later years I would come to find out that the majority of things I was taught about denominations were either flat out lies or exaggerations to make them sound bad.
Did anyone else experience this? I was always embarrassed enough whenever any friend of mine came to our church (that should have told me something right there...I knew at an early age that the COC was strange...), but then I always hated having to turn them down when I was invited to their church. And I was expected to tell them, "Your church doesn't teach the truth, I'm just trying to teach you the truth!" Yeah, it never happened...I just told them that my parents wouldn't allow me to go to their church, and yet the CoC wonders why people rarely brings their friends from outside of "the one true church" with them...