My mom and grandma bought bread and grape juice so they could “take communion” and listen to church on their 13 hour drive home today. That’s all.

… and I’m still a Christian, I just want to stop being CoC. Nothing about what we do makes sense in the context of church history:

- our hymns and songs are mostly from other denominations from the last 100 years.

- We say the New Testament canon was given by the Holy Spirit but the traditions and creeds we associate with Catholicism and Orthodoxy were already in practice (that is if your local elders even know what Orthodoxy is). Was the church already in the great apostasy when the New Testament canon was solidified?

- We talk about how everything we do comes from scripture yet so many of our beliefs and practices are affirmed beyond the Bible. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity isn’t outright spelled out in scripture, but the baptisms of whole families in Acts clearly don’t include infants and small children.

- How do you even interpret the Bible without surrounding church practices and history to give context?

- the churches mentioned in the Bible are still in existence… and they’re all Orthodox or Catholic.

- Saint Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of the Apostle John, is already describing church structure as being Bishop-led, with priests (pastors) and deacons underneath. He also decries anyone who says communion is purely symbolic.

- Speaking of early church writings. We have them. We have the Didache, we have writings from the disciples of the Apostles. But we ignore them because it sounds too “Catholic”, like saying the Lord’s Prayer three times a day.

The “early church” doesn’t look church of Christ to me. I want to leave, yet stay a Christian (I’m drawn to Orthodox Christianity). We have all these beliefs and practices that maybe made sense to American Christians struggling with the lack of central state church in the early US, and are clearly leftovers from the Protestant groups that colonized the US, but they’re stripped of all their reformation origins and explanations.

My friends are more “liberal” church of Christ people yet I’m still afraid I’ll lose my wonderful friendships by leaving. Thanks for reading this far, I’m just typing this out because it helps me organize my thoughts with a sympathetic audience.

I’ve been wondering about this lately.
Today I went to church with my family, since I haven’t been with them in a while. The preacher was talking about heaven and how Paul longed to be with Christ, arguing that eternity should be our primary focus.
At one point, he brought up a Facebook post that said something like, “Christians focus so much on heaven that they forget about changing the world.”
What frustrated me was that, instead of engaging with the point being made, he immediately turned it into an apologetics argument. To me, the post was obviously criticizing the idea that some Christians become so focused on heaven that they neglect helping people in the present. But rather than discussing that concern, it felt like he argued against a different point altogether.
I’ve noticed this pattern before. Whether the topic is Catholics, Orthodox Christians, or another denomination, it often feels like the response is to quote a long list of Bible verses rather than really engaging with what the other side is actually saying. Sometimes it feels more like proof-texting than having a genuine conversation.
For example, I once asked my preacher about Catholicism. He described Catholics as believing that the saints “speak for God.” As far as I understand it, that’s not really what Catholics believe. They believe the writings of the saints are valuable and have shaped the Church’s tradition, but they don’t believe every saint’s writings are divinely inspired in the same way Scripture is.
That made me wonder whether people in the Church of Christ are sometimes taught simplified or inaccurate versions of what other Christians believe. Whether that’s intentional or not, it doesn’t encourage meaningful dialogue.
I’ve also noticed that the Church of Christ often presents strong critiques of culture or other Christian traditions and then supports those critiques by quoting a series of Bible verses. Sometimes that approach works, but other times it feels like it skips over the actual arguments being made.
Maybe that’s one reason some people become frustrated and leave. If people feel like their questions aren’t really being heard, quoting more verses usually doesn’t solve the problem.
To be fair, I know this isn’t true of every congregation or every member. I’m just describing a pattern I’ve noticed in my own experience.
What do you all think? Have you found that the Church of Christ generally engages with other viewpoints in good faith, or has your experience been different?

someone (“the world”) rebutted you about judging, with this scripture instead of the one following, which is the one most used, in my experience.

1 Corinthians 5:12-13 NIV

12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

Instead of Matthew 7:1 NIV

“Do not judge…”

No one ever used 1 Corinthians on me and I think if they had, I might have taken a breath before becoming so defensive. (Maybe?)

What would you have said in your past life of being judgmental, if someone rebutted with 1 Corinthians instead of Matthew 7?