Why I Do Not Enjoy Attending Church

Written By:  Andrew Eide

I will be honest and tell you that I do not enjoy attending church. There are numerous reasons for my feelings and I will list a few of them today.

Before I do I want to comment on the fact that going to church and sitting in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in your garage makes you a car. I don’t believe attending church is what determines if you get into Heaven on Judgment Day. I believe it is your personal relationship with God that is judged.

There are two things to consider. First is that you can have a personal relationship with God without having to go to church and listen to sermons and go through formalities and traditions. On the flip side you can go to church, pay your tithe, sing all the songs, listen to sermons, go through formalities, and follow traditions, and still not have a relationship with God.

Remember the Bible states man who worked all the lives doing what they thought were good deeds will be turned away. Go get a Bible and read it for yourself. God reviews the books and tells a person they are not allowed into Heaven. They protest stating to God that they fed the hungry, gave money and food to the poor, and even cast out demons in his name, so why they are not allowed into Heaven. God replies to them “Depart from me you worker of iniquity. I never knew you” meaning they did all these good things to try to earn salvation and salvation is nothing to be earned it can only come from being a gift from God.

With that said here are some reasons I don’t enjoy attending church.

(1) I am quickly bored and within 15 minutes of sitting down I am falling asleep. I would rather stay home than to fall asleep and embarrass my family like that.

(2) When I was a little boy we never attended church until my father’s friend, Dale Evans, told my father he has to raise us as Catholics as he did with his family. My father told Dale he wanted his children to research religion for themselves but he did bring us to the Catholic Church Dale Evans attended. I was brought to the Sunday School and I was scared as I was alone as my parents were in church and my sister was in a different classroom. I raised my hand and asked to be excused so I could talk to my parents. The Sunday School Teacher screamed at me in front of the class and told me to sit down and shut up and that I wasn’t leaving until the class was over. I cried the whole time the class was in session. When the class was over I ran out of the classroom crying and never looked back and never went to church again until I was in my late 20’s.

(3) I’ve been a member of non-denominational churches and I’ve attended services at Pentecostal, Baptist, and Seventh-day Adventist churches. I found most members to be hypocrites as they said one thing but did the opposite. The worst were the Seventh-day Adventists who professed healthy lifestyles and yet they ate horribly unhealthy foods and most drank alcoholic beverages and smoked. I cannot sit in a church and endure looking at someone at the pulpit spewing forth healthy living when I know what they do outside of church.

I will attend the Catholic Church that Becx, Keira, and Nanay attend maybe once per month. I am not able to endure it every week. I know some of the members and I know how they are outside of the Catholic Church. I know they don’t live what they preach in the church and I know they also don’t live what they, as individuals, profess to be their beliefs and lifestyles.

When I do my once-a-month trip to the church I will write a blog to tell you about my experience. Until then understand that I feel I can have a relationship with God without having to deal with a church environment where I know over half the attendees are hypocrites and don’t follow what God asks them to follow through his words in the Bible.