So after years of being a “lukewarm Christian” at best I finally started regularly going to a baptist church last spring, right before they stopped making people wear masks indoors. I was longing for spiritual fullness so much that I ignored the fact that they were almost all mask and government law lovers.
Shortly after joining the church the mask mandate was lifted and despite not being a fan of most of their worship music, and despite teaching out of the ESV which I have mixed feelings about, I was enjoying it.
A month ago we returned to mask-dom and couldn’t help but going back to feeling like an outsider, hating every moment of it. I “want” to go back but I feel differently about 90% of the members now (that they are suckers) and having grown quite a bit feel like I don’t even want to go anymore. What do you fellow Christians think? I almost feel like I’d only be going at this point so I don’t “look” like a backpedaler, and don’t want to offend the very good Pastors there. not into the worship music, the Bible study lessons I can get elsewhere, and im not big on socializing…
What would/did you do? Stick with it? Find a new church? Just continue to worship on my own?
This is a great question, and one I had to answer myself recently.
My own home church has become very small and is largely populated by retired people over seventy. No kids left (I have a son of 12). And they have been too concerned about the bug to meet in person, so they only Zoomed their meetings. I'd been a part of this church all my life and was very comfortable there (which should be a red flag in itself).
But I needed more, and my son most definitely needed interaction with other kids of faith, so I began the search.
One thing I decided on early was that I would only consider churches that were autonomous. In other words, none of the Big Denominations which were structured as a hierarchy and received their running orders from an elite board. That sort of structure would be too easy for the enemy to infiltrate and corrupt.
This made the search a little harder, but I did manage to find one that so far is suiting me well. I've only been there for a couple of months now, so the jury's still out. Hopefully this will be it.
Hope this helps a bit.