Fast forwarding a couple years, one Sunday evening I was practicing at church for a Sunday evening worship service when suddenly the wife of one of the elderly church deacons came running up to the stage holding a decibel meter and was angrily shouting and screaming at us that we were offending her and driving out the spirit of God. She was really out of line and lost her cool and no one in the church ever apologized for that. It really shook me up at the time but I had actually already been losing my interest with leading worship there or even attending there anyway. Things had changed, I was grown up and was ready to move on. This circumstance was all I needed to make the break. Ironically it was within a week or two of that situation that another youth pastor at another church nearby reached out to me to see if I was interested in leading worship there. It was an easy decision, I made the jump. It was another Assembly of God church but a much bigger one. The youth group at this new church was bigger than the entire previous church I had been attending!
The youth pastor at this church was, let’s say… unconventional. He was completely different from anyone else I had ever served with or under at any other church. He was aggressive, arrogant, big, loud, bold and he ran his youth group the same way. It was intense to say the least. He was into heavy metal and was up for loud worship. That was just what I was looking for. Some local bible college students interned there at times and some joined with me on the worship team and eventually I started a band with a couple of them.
After a couple years there I finally got married to the girl I met at the christian music festival. It wasn’t long after that the youth pastor left and things started to decline. I had never really liked that church as it always felt fake, but I was willing to put up with it while I was serving there in the youth group. Things were changing, people were leaving and moving on, staff was changing, I was getting older and started a family… I just really started to lose interest fast.
Finally after another 2 youth pastors came and went I was seriously ready to move on. We made the announcement to the current youth pastor who was actually younger than me now and we quietly stepped away. My parents continued to go to that church with my brother for a number of years after that, altho My brother was now at the age where he was part of the youth group and was really getting into it and growing close to the youth pastor and to God. It wasn’t long after we left that the new youth pastor had already left as well. I noticed a big change in my brother after this youth pastor left. He would quickly becoming disenchanted with the church in general and steered completely away from it altogether after graduating from high school.
We had no other church to go to for a while. The lead singer of the band I was in had started leading worship at a Vineyard church in his home town and suggested we check out one of the local Vineyard churches. I liked the vineyard music scene already so it seemed like it would be a good fit. After trying to make it work for nearly 6 months we really did not feel any closer to anyone or accepted. We just had no connection and it was feeling more and more awkward.
Finally the first youth pastor from the previous church we had left announced he was starting his own independent church.
We joined almost immediately and we faithfully attended there for the next 6 years, making some immediate and lifelong friendships. It was truly a family. I would end up playing guitar on the worship team nearly every single Sunday for 6 years.
But, Once again, everything changes. The church had always rented space to meet in and thus moved multiple times. Every Sunday was a chore to get there early and setup and then stay late and tear down. It was also failing financially. People were coming and going. But the church was not growing. Everyone was burned out. Finally the pastor called it quits and went back to the same big Assembly of God church were we had first met and he asked everyone to come with him.
This meant going back to the same big church we had left 6 years earlier. The same big church we really didn’t like, even when we were there.
We gave it a try for a couple weeks but couldn’t do it. It just didn’t feel right. Everyone and everything there was still as fake as ever.
Some friends had started going to another, even bigger Assembly of God church that just a few minutes from our house and said we should try it. We reluctantly tried it and fell in love. It was a very big church but the music and the atmosphere and “presence of God” was totally refreshing and attractive and we ended up coming back every Sunday for the next 8 years. Once again I joined the worship team but this time it was in a very professional setting. Something I had never really experienced. It was a very well oiled machine and was operating at a very high level. A level I was largely unaccustomed to and even intimidated by but I rose to the occasion. We enjoyed the worship and the messages and the atmosphere. We were able to just come and go freely and easily. However, we really made no new connections. After attending for nearly 10 years and playing on the worship team a couple times a month we walked away in 2020 and have had almost zero contact with anyone from that church since.
Since leaving that church in the fall of 2020 we have not returned to a “church” setting. Our understanding of the Bible, and how we are called to respond to it are simply so far removed from any church that we know of, we just can’t imagine being a part of something we have so many discrepancies with.
Our response has not been of complete abandonment of our faith, but rather a renewal and a fresh understanding of how it largely still applies to us today. We have studied and learned so much more since 2016 and even since 2020 than we had ever previously learned, even tho we were in the church every single Sunday and Wednesday for over 40 years!
The following posts will elaborate on how that process happened….
