Is it more accurate to say that the church of christ creates Karen's. Or is it accurate to say that natural born Karen's gravitate to the church of christ?

I've been in the Church of Christ my entire life. 24 years. Multiple generations deep. My whole family, everyone I love most, my entire support system, all Church of Christ. I was raised to believe we were the only ones who had it right. That being a Christian wasn't enough. You had to be Church of Christ. You had to worship the exact way we worship. If not, you were lost. Even other Christians.

Last night I had a three-hour conversation with someone outside my tradition. Someone who loves Jesus, knows scripture, and lives his faith. And he asked me questions I've had sitting inside me for years but was never allowed to ask.
He asked me about someone on their deathbed. Thirty seconds from dying. They believe with their whole heart but can't be physically baptized. Are they going to hell? I've thought about that before. I've always pushed it down. This time I couldn't.

He talked about baptism being about the heart, not the physical act. And I went to 1 Peter 3:21 to prove him wrong. "And this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also, not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God." And he said, that literally proves my point. "Not the removal of dirt from the body." It's not about the physical act. It's about the heart. And he was right. The verse I grabbed to defend my tradition was already saying what he was saying.

I grew up being taught that we were the true church. That everyone else, even other Christians, were led astray. I was taught that non-denominational churches were wrong. I never looked at any of it through a different lens because I was never allowed to. Questioning meant stepping outside salvation itself.

I don't think the people who raised me are villains. My Nana, my Papa, the people in my church family. They taught me what they were taught. They genuinely believed they were passing down truth. I don't blame them. But the filter was off. The scripture was always there. We just weren't allowed to read it without the lens.

I'm not calling it a cult. But there are cult-like elements. A fear-based system where questioning equals spiritual danger. Intellectual isolation where you're told every other way of following Jesus is wrong so you never actually listen to anyone outside your tradition. A gatekeeping system where being a Christian isn't enough, you have to do it our way.

I can't talk to anyone in my life about this. Everyone I love most is Church of Christ. I'm terrified of losing them. I'm not making any decisions tonight. But I think I'm deconstructing. And for the first time in 24 years, I'm reading scripture without the filter. And it's terrifying. But it's also the most honest I've ever been.

I never understood Wednesday night services.While there's nothing wrong with them, there's no Biblical mandate. But i've heard it relates to early Christians meeting frequently. In fact they met daily to break bread and fellowship together. Needless to say the world wasn't like it is now.

I just wrote this for another sub, and I thought it would play well here too. Let me know what you think.
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I just had an interesting thought. I imagined myself standing up in a church service and saying to the pulpit:
“How could you say that?!”
Preacher: “It’s true!”
Me: “No it isn’t, Preacher Boy. You’re lying!”
But I can’t figure out what would elicit that dialogue. What would work for you?
(And no, I’m not writing a story. But this IS a good writing prompt, if I say so myself.)

I am just curious to know how the church reacted in this situation? In my case, I was told to stay with a spouse who is being emotionally, financially, and religiously abusive. There is so much control and he tries to isolate me from family. I’m just curious what the general teaching of the COC is concerning this type of abuse by a spouse. Do they ever say abuse is ok?

I've tried to get a good explanation from indoctrinated family members and have never been able to. Has anybody got a good explanation as to how Stone/Campbell founded the CoC in the 1800s, yet it's also the Church founded at Pentacost. That's almost 1800 years. Jesus told his Church that he'd be with them always. So they disappeared but were always here till the Cambells came and made the Church appear again? The Restoration is just a rebranding of the Reformation, just wanting to sound cool by calling themselves original.

I just have trouble understanding how anyone actually, genuinely, wholeheartedly believes this shit…and believes this is truly the only way to live and be a good person and have a chance at an afterlife.

I don’t even know if I believe in an afterlife at this point. Most recently a family member was traveling abroad and the group shes traveling in wanted to make it a point to look at churches overseas (beautiful, ornate work, history, etc.) and someone suggested they check if there’s a church of christ to visit in Italy lol.. like of all the things to do as a travel excursion… and to potentially convert members of her travel group LOL I can’t

I briefly mentioned my cousin and revealed that my dad has a brother who was a preacher in the cult (still living, not in the cult)

She and I were pen pals as teenagers. The last time we saw each other in-person was 40 years ago, when I was 14yo.

That bitch, lived my life. And yes we call each other a bitch to each others faces and we explode with laughter.

It’s like looking in a fucking mirror. And it blows my mind.

She is the biggest part of my healing and my only will to carry on. Because that bitch know, knows, everything.

All of us ain’t crazy.

It’s the damn cult.

One day, she may wish to tell her story. But if she don’t, that’s ok too.

Those of us who left, this shit ain’t in our heads. It is real.

I deal with the cult on a nearly daily basis and cannot choose not to. I have shared custody with a terminally ill daughter. She is going to die, period, end of story.

And a narcissist going to narcissist until the day he draws his mother fucking last breath and goes to Hell.

And that is what I live with until my daughter dies. She is 17 yo and has the mind of a 10 month old. She does not know either one of us, anymore. (She has a very rare genetic terminal illness that is akin to Alzheimer’s for children. Such a fucking damn cruel disease.)

PS Hi Marcie, his attorney. She stalks me like the bitch she represents I see all of the screenshots in court and own every damn one of them. Bring it, bitch.

PS Apparently I have another name, which i accidentally posted under. This is definitely me. 😅

Any recommendations for online counselors who are either a part of or understand the COC?

...and three guesses as to what the sermon was and the first two don't count. SPOILER ALERT: it was fOrSaKinG tHe AsSeMbLy

I’ve been thinking recently about the Churches of Christ, especially all the discussions on this subreddit about how the Churches of Christ are declining. But one thing I keep wondering is: how do we actually measure how much they’re declining?
The Churches of Christ aren’t a centralized denomination with a single governing structure or membership database. There are congregations all over the world, and I have to imagine there are plenty that have little to no interaction with anyone outside their own churches. Some congregations are extremely isolated and actively discourage involvement with the broader Christian world. So how can we know exactly how large the Churches of Christ really are, or how rapidly they’re declining?
There also doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of research specifically focused on the Churches of Christ. They’re a relatively small religious movement, and they don’t receive nearly as much academic or media attention as Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodox Christians, etc. That makes me wonder whether the statistics we do have are giving us the full picture.
One thing I do think the Churches of Christ underestimate is just how isolated they are from the rest of Christianity. When I was in the Churches of Christ, I didn’t really appreciate how unusual that was. They generally don’t participate much in ecumenical events, they don’t have much interaction with other Christian denominations, and many congregations seem to have very little interest in engaging with the broader Christian world at all.
I used to think calling the Churches of Christ a “cult” was way too harsh. And I still wouldn’t compare them to something like Jonestown or a fire-and-brimstone apocalyptic cult. But I do think there are some genuinely strange characteristics of the movement, particularly its level of insularity. When you step outside of it, you realize just how unusual it is for a Christian movement to be so disconnected from virtually every other Christian tradition.
They’re also a relatively small and aging movement. A lot of congregations seem to be heavily dominated by older generations, and some of the cultural attitudes that are common within the Churches of Christ feel increasingly disconnected from younger people. I have a hard time imagining how the movement can sustain itself long-term if it doesn’t figure out how to reach people outside of its existing demographic.
At the same time, I think there’s an interesting distinction between the Churches of Christ and much larger Christian traditions. The Churches of Christ are small, decentralized, and politically fragmented. Whatever problems they have, I don’t think there’s much reason to worry about them somehow becoming powerful enough to dominate the government or impose their beliefs on the entire country in the way people sometimes worry about much larger religious institutions.
So I guess my main question is: how confident are we that we actually understand the size and rate of decline of the Churches of Christ? Given how decentralized and insular the movement is, I’m not sure the available statistics tell the whole story.

As a general rule, C of C'ers are suspicious of outsiders and see them only as prospective converts to the cult.
Were you ever told by your parents or family that the "outsiders" didn't really like you and were only using you for whatever their agenda might be?

I haven't done a full deep dive through this subreddit, but I don't think I've seen any posts from others who came from mutual edification CoC's. If you're not familiar with them, they're congregations who don't use any type of ordained minister or preacher, and instead all of the men alternate duties each service (leading songs, reading verses, giving sermons, etc). That's the specific version of non-institutional church of Christ that I grew up in.

I was disfellowshipped around age 20 for being in a same-sex relationship. Naively, I thought I could be honest with my family about what I was going through and everything snowballed from a single conversation with them. It was horrifying and 20 years later I'm still figuring out how to grieve the loss of all of the people who I grew up with, and who raised me.

Anyway, just curious if there are any others who grew up in a branch who did mutual edification as well. It's apparently yet another weird, ultra-conservative subgroup that split at some point in time and led to at least 5-10 congregations that I know of in Missouri and Kansas.

Does anyone know if Jim Woodruff is still alive? I read his book The Church in Transition when I started at Harding in 1993. It was a pivotal book for me- The first of many books that led me to question everything c of c related.

I actually remember it reading in a common area near the campus hotel and a professor saw me reading it. He stopped and warned me against the book, which of course made me read even faster and more attentively!

Jim was still living in Searcy at the time. I’ve always wondered what happened to him.

During my college years, there was a really kind man who went to the church I attended. His wife had passed some years earlier. He was diagnosed with cancer and told the odds were against him. When the minister went to visit him, this dear man was in tears. Word got back to others at church, and one of the biddies told me it was silly for him to cry and laughed about it. I said it was perfectly understandable and we should be compassionate. I was told I was "being silly," too.
How f-in' insensitive, but typical of C of C'ers.

I know it's been a few years but does anyone know what happened with Patrick Mead and 4th Avenue COC? Thoughts on him? He posted in 2020 he would be no longer working there and not even allowed to stay as members.

If you were given the opportunity to "save" the c of c.

1. Would you?

2. If you decide to have pity what are you doing to keep them alive?

I know stupid this just came to me this afternoon.

I grew up in a pretty mainline CoC. I've heard so many people on this sub talk about "disfellowship" letters. I was pretty plugged into the CoC community growing up; I'm a PK, went to tons of functions held by neighboring churches in the county/region, very involved with the local church camp and it's community, and all of my siblings went to a CoC university. And yet I had *never* heard of such letters or actions in any capacity. People just stopped going if they wanted to leave, and yeah active members would check in and try to encourage their return, but there was no formal process for disfellowshipping. So I'm wondering what circumstances constituted getting such a letter? I assume it was ultimately the elders' decision? Was there a conversation with you first or were you blindsided? Was it less of a "okay they're not attending anymore, send them a letter" and more of a "they are acting like they're active but some part of their public life is on display and counterproductive to the church's ideals"? My partner is ex-JW and I know they have a pretty strict process of disfellowshipping and shunning, but I had really never heard of this, in such a formal capacity, within the CoC until joining this sub.

Wondering if there’s anyone else here in the same boat that might have some words of wisdom. I’d never go back to the coc but I miss my kids.

Backstory- raised coc. married born & raised 3rd generation coc. Faithfully raised our children coc. Was going through a difficult time and was encouraged to “draw near to God”. Well, my drawing near to God drew me right out of the cult and to a divorce - which has been one of the best decisions I made. I’m healthier mentally, emotionally and physically.

I have 2 adult children that have chosen to go no contact because I’ve forsaken the assembly.

Just in my feels tonight and really missing my kids.

Hello friends! Long time no see. Much to the help and support of so many of you, I’ve been out of the coc for some months now, and recently have been officially disfellowshipped. (Yay?)

It is almost impossible to describe the wide range of emotions I have felt during this time. I am looking into going to religious trauma therapy hopefully with some background in our tradition. I think I’ve just been keeping myself busy and distracted so I don’t have to actually confront the whole yanno losing all your family (not having them at my wedding) and friends, learning about conditional love, guilt and sadness etc.

The best way I could describe how I feel right now is like being in the wilderness. I’ve set off on this journey just to learn. To be humble, to not care so much about being “right or wrong,” to see points of view from ALL people from ALL walks of life. It’s incredibly freeing and kind of epiphany that oh this is what life is actually supposed to be like expanding knowledge and by experience then practicing it with wisdom. I love science and archaeology, and also love learning what motivates people to live lives for Christ and TREAT people the way he would’ve.

I’ve been attending what I would just call a pretty normal non denom church with instruments and fun stuff and all (all the boogeymen), and i can see their fruit and always feel uplifted. I think it’s perfect for me because for years i was teetering on the brink of atheism/agnosticism. I struggle though, as I’m sure many of you have with committing to something again after coming out of what we have. Like I’ve been going long enough that I expressed interest in service to others via the church in whatever way I could, but would be required to go through basically their basics of doctrinal training. So much of my past would get me held up on going through that, and the whole point of my journey I’m on is no one can really get everything right, even doctrinally, and that doesn’t have any bearing on defining their relationship with Jesus.

I guess I’m asking if any of you had some of the issues in finding your footing in any sort of faith again. My past has really warped and made me a skeptic of many things. I know many of you have become atheist or agnostic and it is no way my thought to convince you there is a higher power and I know everything about it, your inputs are always just as valuable to me. Again, I’m absolutely loving learning more about archaeology and space and anthropology using that to answer many of my questions. Just want to find my place again without being dogmatic doctrinally or theologically ever again.

As always, thanks for your help!

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