Tell us Why You Are Not Presently Attending a Local Church

30 thoughts on “Tell us Why You Are Not Presently Attending a Local Church”

1. I’m finding it harder to tell you why I left the local assembly than to tell why I left the husband. I can just feel the pointing fingers. The very last chance to be taken seriously by other Christians flew out the back door when I stopped attending services.

   Nothing else I ever have to say will be heard because — “you can’t possibly be a believer, you don’t attend church.” Case closed.

   I can tell you a few things that seriously bothered me — the spiritually abusive pastor who trashed his wife from the pulpit every Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night. Feeling like I got beat up every day of the week only to have it repeated by those I knew and loved in the one place that should have been a sanctuary. Watching as strange doctrines marched in. Watching those that truly loved the Lord being persecuted and even run out — not at one place, but over and over.

   Going to services, trying to connect with other believers became one colossal waste of time when what I honestly needed was that one day a week of rest and renewal. I found that by taking Sunday off and actually resting. I consciously ceased from working around the house and instead sought the Lord’s presence with all my heart, focusing on His goodness without bringing Him my list of “honey-do’s”.

   One thing’s for certain. I never quit assembling together. It might not have been one morning a week in a designated building with a song leader up front. Sometimes, it was much more often than that. Those who truly love Jesus find a way. We seek others out who understand our passion for our Father. And every time we get together we have church and that is a fact.

   1. Ida Mae – actually, you did a great job explaining. And I fully understand. Look at the following verses that are so often quoted to tell someone they need to be in church —

      (Hebrews 10:24-25 ESV) (24) And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, (25) not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

      Yes, we need to meet together. But for what purpose? For encouragement. For stirring each other’s souls up so that we are encouraged to love and to do good works. When the church ceases to be a place where that is happening to genuine Christians, when a believer like you goes there, hurting and needful, but find you are only accused and rejected — then who has really quit assembling together? I have no doubt at all that you do and would gladly join in with the people of Christ who know what it is to love and to encourage. And you are right, you are finding it — but in unconventional places. What would have happened if Paul and the early church had the internet? What is happening in countries where open, public worship is prohibited? You can be sure that Christ’s people will find ways to gather.

   2. Thank you for sharing.

2. When I left, I heard a chorus of — “See? Your marriage wouldn’t have failed if you’d stayed in church.” My reply was, “Really? And you’re basing this on what? Because so few marriages inside congregations ever fail?” Bunkum!

   Or were they saying the estranged would’ve repented eventually? He hadn’t in decades, so why would a few more years change anything? Or (and this is more likely) were they implying that I would not have left despite the hell we faced on a daily basis?

   That last statement is quite possible. The constant barrage of bad teaching, social / peer pressure to conform and the prospect of being completely ostracized just might have kept me another decade. It certainly kept me for two decades at least.

   I doubt seriously I would’ve lived that long so the point is moot.

3. I would dearly love to attend a local church and would love for my children to attend also. We have been shut outside church for years. I grew up attending Sunday school and church all the time because my father was a minister who loved the church. My children have not had this privilege. I stopped going for quite a while because attending church always made my “Good Christian Husband” even more abusive than usual. I was never allowed to develop my own friendships with anyone at church, and especially not with the pastors. I tried going to church as a family again last year, but once again as soon as the “GCH” started attending church, I became subjected to terrible abuse. This time I tried to tell the pastor something of what was going on. Big mistake!

   From that time the “GCH” prevented me from going out to church by whatever means necessary, including physically blocking me from going out the door of the house. And of course a tsunami of abuse followed, which has not stopped, even though he has now left. I had to involve several social services for myself and my children, one of whom was severely affected. When I didn’t turn up at church, the pastor, or his wife (it wasn’t clear), sent me an email saying in effect “we know that you have issues, but you need to be at church. Don’t worry we won’t tell anyone. Sometimes couples just have some communication problems and you should let us counsel you both together”.

   When my husband finally left, he went and informed the pastor. The pastor’s wife immediately came around and angrily abused me because “you won’t go to counseling”. I have been unable to find another church because the “GCH”, or his extended family, is great friends with many of the people in all the evangelical churches in town. I don’t want to go to church and be given lectures about the evils of broken marriages. Those churches don’t want me, they only want the fiction that has been presented to them.

   1. KayE, unfortunately your story is not at all unique. I really do not sense in these stories from victims that they are exaggerated, or that these women are just making excuses. Your account supports my theory. Christians like you have not rejected the “church”, — it has rejected you. I know that even a real Christian can be ignorant and act foolishly — for a time. But stories like yours are indicating, in my opinion, that many local churches are functioning on the theology of the Pharisees, and how many of them are real churches, I just don’t know. Someday, I hope, you will be able to find a real fellowship of believers who will love you. In the meantime, stay close to Christ and He will never let you down.

4. I have been unable to find another church because the “GCH”, or his extended family, is great friends with many of the people in all the evangelical churches in town.

   KayE, I think this is a common tactic of the abuser. My former husband formed close friendships with pastors, Elders, police and doctors in the towns where we lived, so who was I supposed to turn to? He attended a men’s Bible study and church every week, whereas I stayed home, but I did not neglect reading my Bible, praying and listening to sermons on the internet although I craved Christian company. To an outsider I was the unbeliever and he was the believer, but in reality it was the opposite. At home he never opened his Bible except for the one time when he wanted to prove me wrong about the meaning of repentance. In twenty years of marriage he never prayed with me, never read to me from God’s word, but to others in the church he was a godly man because he helped many people and had their undivided loyalty.

5. I am currently attending a church with caring Christians, but during my marriage I stopped attending church for three years. My former husband drove dangerously to church to frighten me. He ignored me while I was there and wouldn’t bring me home when I needed to come home. I would arrive feeling sick and nervous after his erratic driving. Eventually I gave up attending church and prayed and studied at home. I did not backslide but I thrived. No one from the church ever rang me to find out why I stopped attending and whether they could help.

   1. Maree – you see a bit of a pattern here. I have heard this from numbers of Christian women who were married to an abuser. If she wanted to go to church, or after she came home from church, he stepped up the abuse to stop her from doing so. This is a plain mark of an unconverted man who hates Christ. It is nothing less than a Christian woman suffering persecution for her faith in Christ.

      1. Maree — that brings back memories.

         My husband would make us late on purpose, then yell at all of us for being so slow. He’d decide to wash the car at the last minute, screaming the whole time about how it had to be done and no one but him ever did anything.

         Then he drove like a maniac, grumbling, yelling, hollering the whole way until we arrived. The minute he opened the car door it was “honey” this and “baby” that — while the rest of us stumbled out, shaken and upset.

         Yes indeed — the Sunday morning gauntlet. Ugh….

      2. Ida Mae, when I read your words, I had to look at the username and to see if it wasn’t something I had written myself in the past, because it is exactly how it was for me:

         My husband would make us late on purpose, then yell at all of us for being so slow. He’d decide to wash the car at the last minute, screaming the whole time about how it had to be done and no one but him ever did anything.

         Then he drove like a maniac, grumbling, yelling, hollering the whole way until we arrived. The minute he opened the car door it was “honey” this and “baby” that — while the rest of us stumbled out, shaken and upset.

         He is now no longer my husband, thank God. And I no longer have a church family with whom to fellowship in person because of it.

6. I have not attended a traditional church regularly for almost 3 years. I have plans to return to the first church our family attended when the divorce is complete. I was, and as far as I know, still am a member of another church since the mid 1980s.

   About 15 years ago, I went to the pastor who was there for a majority of the time in search of help when my ex-husband-to-be (EHTB) was having an affair, being verbally abusive and was not supporting the family despite a big job. I told the pastor, who was much loved by the congregation, as much as I was able about the “marriage” in the hour that I had. He made few comments and at the end told me to come back with the EHTB. The EHTB was agreeable and came to speak to the pastor with me. He was enraged, lied about and denied everything, for which I had solid proof. At the end of that session during which I was allowed to say nothing, the pastor said “I believe you (EHTB).” I was foolish enough to think to myself “He is just trying to establish a working relationship with (the EXTB).” I learned this was far from the truth. At one point, that pastor called me at work and said (the EHTB) had told him that I was having an affair and asked me if that was true. (I have not been unfaithful in the almost 33 years of “marriage.”)

   In the past few years we had attended several other churches, after returning from the mission field (yes, long story) and living in a different area of town. At the one we attended most frequently, we also attended a home group very regularly. When the EHTB escalated his most recent episode of emotional, verbal, spiritual and in one instance an episode of brief physical threat, and I saw for the first time how far he had gotten with shrinking my circle of acquaintances, friends and family, I made a firm decision to divorce. I stopped going to the home group or any place with him. The EHTB not only continued that group but also starting going to several others and frequently having meetings and coffee with pastors around town. No one from the home group ever contacted me. This is just dumb-founding to me. Not one called me or emailed me. Nothing.

   So to sum up, I am not believed or I am suspected of being the guilty party by many people who profess to be Christians. One other part of this, on which I haven’t elaborated, is that the EHTB is hanging on and I believe would interfere by attempting to slander me if I tried to become involved right now.

   I feel that most “church people” avoid me whenever they can. They have little to say to me when they can’t avoid me. This was compounded by the loss of my middle son, who passed in 2009. No one knows what to say to me at the best. At the worst, they believe the lies the EHTB has told about me.

   Fortunately I am never alone. The Lord is always with me. I have Christ-following women who are close friends, several of whom have been in the same situation. I also have a small group of Christ-following women who haven’t been in this spot but do everything they can to be supportive.

7. Oh my! Ida Mae, you just described Sunday mornings here! Of course, there was the awful ridicule and critisism of the sermon, the pastor personally, and members of the congregation on the way home as he blasted rock music on the car radio. We were out of church for the majority of our marriage. When we did attend, we were definitely church hoppers. We’ve been at one church for almost well over a year now, but we haven’t attended in four weeks and haven’t received a single phone call.

   One day a few months ago I stopped in to ask for prayer and was told to write it on a sticky note, everyone was busy. However, after I wrote my first response to Pastor Crippen and mentioned in it how absentee my church as been, I received an invitation on Facebook from the pastor’s wife of one of those churches we left because my husband didn’t like any of the men there and didn’t “want those people at our house”. She sent me a message from her husband, telling me that he said to tell me, “Come back to our church. Single moms need support.” Praise God! hat was an answer to prayer for sure! I pray that every woman on here receives that same kind of invitation. And, Pastor Crippen, thank you again for being our cyber-support and our cyber-pastor. Last Sunday the boys and I listened to your old sermons for 8 hours straight.

   [Paragraph break added to enhance readability. Editors.]

   1. Lisa – very nice of you to give us encouragement. We need it too. That is excellent news that the pastor’s wife contacted you and I hope that your experience with that church becomes a good one. There ARE real Christians to be found! Christ has His sheep, and they DO hear His voice, and they will not listen to the voice of a stranger. We need to constantly encourage one another to listen for the Shepherd’s voice by comparing what we are being taught and told with His Word, praying that His Spirit would show us His truth in the midst of the fog of error coming at us all. I am glad the sermons are helping you. I preached them, let’s see, about 2 years ago! I have learned a lot since then. If you hear anything in them that doesn’t ring true, pass over it and just move on to what does. Blessings on you and the boys!

8. The EHTB not only continued that group but also starting going to several others and frequently having meetings and coffee with pastors around town.

   Hi, Pippa, this sounds like my former husband who would go from house to house in town drinking coffee and I believe possibly also spreading lies about me (I’ll never know). I used to visit people with him, but he would interrupt when I spoke, and when he spoke the conversation was all about him. I stopped visiting people with him. About six months ago I bumped into a close friend of my former husband, an Elder and his wife in a store. When I said “hello” to them, the Elder said “hello” before realising who I was (they hadn’t seen me for about three and a half years) then the both of them just turned and walked away.

9. Hi, Maree,
   You had mentioned previously that your former husband also befriended the police. This was true in my case as well. In fact he wrote a “New York Times” best-selling book about “cute” stories from the police that they loved. Did the family ever receive a penny from that publication? You know the answer.

   About the time I filed for divorce last year, I went to speak with the domestic violence detective about a “minor” (if there is such a thing) episode of physical abuse. I was met with sarcasm and minimizing by that detective. I can only guess why.

10. I never saw my to-be-ex ever reading the Bible, except while in church. It collected dust at the head of our bed. I have read the Bible daily for over 40 years, and he wouldn’t think twice about interrupting me while I was reading.

    He never went to church unless I went, even if I was ill and told him to go alone, he wouldn’t go to church without me. At the coffee gathering after the service, he would wait until I started speaking with someone, and then butt in and monopolize the conversation. I was baptized, and he decided to be baptized with me. I joined the choir, he joined, too.

    After awhile I became depressed, not knowing that it was the abuse. I stopped attending church. You guessed it….he did, too. When the pastor came over to speak with me, I blamed it on problems with one of our teenaged children, but now realize it was his abuse along along. He was very lazy with the kids….hardly ever gave them attention and I never heard him give them any positive life lessons at all. Well that’s another story.

    After leaving, I tried to return to the church and left a message for the pastor to call me. He never called back. As my ex-to-be has been spreading malicious lies about me to so many others, I can only surmise he called the pastor too.

11. We are not just rejected by churches; they can be very unsafe places for victims of abuse. In my experience many church-goers self-righteously support the abusers. It is hard to stand up to a bully, but impossible to resist a mob. So how do I feel when someone tells me “It is sin not to be in a church”? Angry.

    1. KayE – when the church becomes a mob. Reminds me of the mob in Jerusalem out to kill Paul. He appealed to Caesar. Yes, you are exactly correct. None of us take any pleasure in having to say it, but a local church can become a very, very unsafe place. Recently we have read through the book “Safe People” by Cloud and Townsend. It is very good (a few glitches biblically, but all in all quite good). The fact is, there are many people, including professing Christians, who simply are not safe people for us to have a relationship with. Certainly that is true of an abuser, but it is also true of his allies — as long as they continue being duped by him or choosing to side with him.

       We all have a right to say “no” to relationships that are not healthy for us. When Christ calls us to assemble together with the saints, it is for the purpose of encouraging one another to “love and good works”. But when a church becomes a place (it may not even be a true church any longer) where what is “encouraged” is “hate and evil deeds”, then it is time for us to leave it. It has been freeing to me to realize that I am not required by the Lord to have a relationship with just anyone who happens to come along. So when someone tells a victim of abuse who has been rejected by her church and mobbed by the mob that she is in sin because she is not in a church, anger is an appropriate reaction. KayE, I bet if I asked you — “Is it your heart’s desire to be in a real church every Sunday?” you would most emphatically say “Yes!!”

       1. My to-be-ex found it very safe to go to church. He would have a smug, satisfied (dare I say “pious”) look on his face when he was there, sitting in the pew. It was like he felt sanctified just by showing up. Church was like a haven for him, where he could play the part of the loving husband.

          Now I need a haven….like KayE I need a real church.

12. I never saw my to-be-ex ever reading the Bible, except while in church. It collected dust at the head of our bed.

    Hi, Now Free After 42 Years, this sounds like my former husband. He only opened the Bible during a Bible study and sometimes at church. It collected dust too. I craved his leadership in the home. I wanted to discuss God’s word with him. He preferred to read the newspaper, a car magazine or watch the TV. His friend, an Elder, tried to convince me that he was a Christian because he asked questions in the Bible study. I told him that anyone who has repented of their sins and believes that eternal life is through the Lord Jesus alone is a Christian, not someone who asks questions in a Bible study.

    I see so many similarities in domestic violence stories that I am convinced that these men (and sometimes women) have the same father — the devil.

13. Maree, it is a real irony that even though he was in control in our marriage, he left the spiritual matters to me. I would often wish he would participate in the role of a real Christian husband. I would also go to Bible study, and can’t remember him ever attending. Come to think of it, I have memories of going home and picking him up afterwards to go to the service.

    It is very sad that we as abused wives, who would forgive and support our husbands, try our best to be wonderful wives, to have this lack of support and trust in our husbands who professed to be Christians.

14. Jeff, you said:

    The fact is, there are many people, including professing Christians, who simply are not safe people for us to have a relationship with.

    And:

    It has been freeing to me to realize that I am not required by the Lord to have a relationship with just anyone who happens to come along.

    I can identify with these comments and have tried to choose my Christian friends wisely. Even professing Christians can have bad morals and can drag me down. I have learned that it is OK to leave certain relationships, and yes, it is freeing.

15. I still attend churches though I’m not embedded in any one church. The hymns are the best part, while I’m singing it’s often just me and God (and the heavenly choir we will be members of when we get to Heaven). I find sitting through the average sermon is a mixed experience: the preacher says some true and valid stuff but I already know it and don’t need to be told again; if he makes lame jokes or gives dumb illustrations it’s a frustrating waste of my time; if he “big-notes” himself I feel disgusted; when he gives applications that apply mostly to the typical besetting sins of males (like “lust of the eyes”) I inwardly yawn — it’s fine, the men need to hear it, but doesn’t the pastor realise it’s not very relevant to the women in the pews (who usually are the majority of the congregation)?. And then there’s almost always the “eeecchh” moment when he says something indicating his ignorance of the dynamics of abuse and the excruciating dilemmas of victims.

    When I left my first husband I had to change churches because the church we’d been attending together didn’t support me, but gave him a roof over his head even though he’d been put out of the marital home because of a court order to protect me from his violence.

    1. Barbara – in my earlier years growing up, I had occasion to be in some Fundamentalist-style churches. I suppose I should write a post sometime on that term. It is good to be a Fundamentalist Christian if it means we hold to the fundamentals of the Gospel. Today, the term conveys a negative idea of legalism and radical ideas that oppress people. Anyway, I have heard Fundamentalist preachers quite often speak in demeaning ways about their wife during the sermon. He would tell a story and inevitably his wife would play the role of the “dumb woman” — he would be the “wise hero”. Everyone would laugh, including unfortunately, his wife. What else could she do? Along with that kind of thing often comes a dictatorial leadership style. I find it very interesting that in those kinds of churches, the idea of a board of Elders is absolutely despised. The pastor is the head honcho.

       I have been a pastor now for almost 30 years, and I can tell you that any pastor who enjoys being the “head honcho” has a really big problem. No man in his right mind would desire that. Scripture promotes just the opposite. Every genuine pastor serves in his office only because of the compelling call of Christ. If it were my own choice, I would have stepped down and led the life of a normal church member many years ago. Sometimes, during the service, just before I step up to preach, I sit in the pew and have a kind of surreal experience. “Here is Jeff. Of all of these people here this morning, here I am — the one who is to step up there and give these people God’s Word. Why me? It certainly isn’t because of my holiness! Christ really does pick the weak and foolish things.” And any pastor who enjoys being in his position and who craves more and more to be in the limelight, to be “the one”, — needs to return to the pew and find another job. He isn’t in his right mind.

       1. UPDATE Sept 2021: I have come to believe that Jeff Crippen does not practise what he preaches. He vilely persecuted an abuse victim and spiritually abused many other people in the Tillamook congregation. Go here to read the evidence. Jeff has not gone to the people that he spiritually and emotionally abused. He has not apologised to them, let alone asked for their forgiveness.

          ***

          Thanks, Jeff! The amazing thing to me is why so many people in the pews actually appear to like those head-honcho, lame-joke, big-note-themself, preachers. What is the mentality that laughs at and goes along with such asinine stuff? I grieve for the church.

16. Here is a good article: When You Are Ready To Try Again — Going Back to Church [Internet Archive link]

17. I just want to say how blessed I was when I found Jeff’s sermons on “SermonAudio” — let me tell you, they are pretty much the only ones there that address abuse in “Christian ” marriages from the point of view of being sympathetic to the one being abused.

    I have been separated for 5 months from my husband of almost 24 years. I can finally breath in my own house and do what I want without him breathing down my neck and following me everywhere. He was very manipulative, deceitful, emotionally, sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusive, even though he never laid a hand on me in anger, nor yelled or called me names. He was a master at making himself look like the humble innocent and me like the raving shrew with nothing more than a sigh, or a hanging of his head.

    I am currently attending a church but it is a struggle as the pastor’s wife is very supportive but the pastor doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what I have been going through even though I have told his wife and him several serious things, including repeated infidelity. He said he wanted to talk to my husband but that he wasn’t going to discuss our issues, he was just going to ask him where he has been and try to get him to “think biblically about things”. Whatever that means. Instead I hear back from him that my husband is ready and willing to do counseling with me and that he seemed glad to hear from the pastor. I was floored as I have made no bones about the fact that I have serious reservations about couple’s counseling and how he would manipulate the pastor, etc. I was angry because I felt like he lied to me.

    I still don’t trust him though he has been very nice to me lately (the pastor). I haven’t told anyone else in the church or in my family (as they have been won over to my EXTB’s side a long time ago. The Elders at church do know I am separated but I have gotten no sympathy from them, or even a single word that they even know what is going on. I feel like I am being shunned. I really am not that comfortable there, but I remain for the sake of my 15 year old daughter is very tired of being bounced from church to church. The last church experience was nightmare as my husband collaborated with my abusive pastor to make my life a living hell when I was already going through some horrific emotional issues.

    Well, needless to say, I could write a book — but I just wanted to say God bless you, pastor, for your heart for the abused women in the church who have no voice.

    [Paragraph breaks added to enhance readability. Editors.]

    1. Thank you, Jodi, very, very much. We are really glad you found the sermons and our blog site and we hope you will be a regular “attender” in our little cyber-fellowship here. We aren’t trying to replace the local church, but we do believe we are providing a much-needed ministry to people like you and so many others who are in the same experience. Your interaction with your present pastor is, unfortunately, very typical. You are absolutely correct in rejecting couple’s counseling as that dynamic tends most often to work against the victim. It implies YOU are at least part of the problem, which is simply not true in abuse cases. The abuser is a master at gaining the pastor and others in the church as allies, especially in the setting of our conservative churches where all kinds of unbiblical traditions and teachings about marriage, divorce, and remarriage abound. The victim is immediately labeled as guilty because she is the one who finally separates.

       I would encourage you to obey Scripture and your conscience and as long as you are genuinely and honestly following Christ to the best of your ability with a clear conscience, then let that peace rule in your mind and heart. In the area of abuse, pastors and Christians are quite often the very worst place to obtain counsel. They are ignorant of the mentality and tactics of abuse and are easily drawn in by the abuser. You are going to be labeled and shunned by some. But not by Christ, and certainly not by your fellow believers who have trod the same path. Blessings on you in Christ.

    2. UPDATE Sept 2021: I have come to believe that Jeff Crippen does not practise what he preaches. He vilely persecuted an abuse victim and spiritually abused many other people in the Tillamook congregation. Go here to read the evidence. Jeff has not gone to the people that he spiritually and emotionally abused. He has not apologised to them, let alone asked for their forgiveness.

       ***

       Dear Jodi, I just want to echo Jeff’s remarks and say thank you so much for sharing here and do keep coming back. We all need each other in this battle against wilful blindness.

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