My Childhood & The Church

As a child, my mother (Queen Mom) took us to church and I liked it for the most part. I loved the singing the most and I got a chance to play with the friends that I would only see on Sundays.

We often visited churches of friends and family and I learned that they were all very different. I know you can agree. I’ve attended Baptist churches, Methodist, Science of the Mind (Religious Science), and African Methodist Episcopal, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Islamic Mosques, Catholic churches, Seventh Day Adventist, non-denominational churches and Kingdom Halls (Jehovah’s Witness).

We even watched church on television (TBN) and that added a whole new dimension to what I came to know as “My Relationship with the Church”.

Having such a broad Spiritual exposure made me really curious about why God was so different to so many people. They all read the same Bible, so I thought. Have you wondered the same thing?

For instance, in some churches, women and girls were not allowed to wear pants, while men and boys were required to wear ties. Some wouldn’t allow women to wear makeup…which was BEYOND Me - HA! (My pastor jokes, “That’s not Holy, that’s Ugly!”)

Some wouldn’t allow girls to play sports. Some had women and men who would “Catch the Holy Ghost” and dance till they passed out during the singing. As a child I used to wonder why God would only choose those same few people to ‘touch’ every week. It was a mystery to me.

Some churches rejected members based on what they believed was ‘bad behavior’.  Most had an atmosphere of judgment and condemnation. And there was always an underlying feeling that you should be afraid of what God will do if you ‘mess up’.

Some were really quiet and the people would listen to the message in a very subdued atmosphere, while others had people shouting in agreement with the pastor throughout the entire sermon.  

I especially liked the ones that served lunch to the congregation after the service. :^) 

All in all, it was interesting to see so many different ways of experiencing God.

Church, for me, was never an every Sunday kind of thing. There were times when we would go every Sunday. Then there were times when we didn’t go at all.

Through it all, my mother (Queen-Mom) was always steadfast in the Word. She prayed every day. I watched her every night as she would fall to her knees beside her bed and pray to God. Although I strayed away from the practice, she did teach my sisters and me to do the same.

She imparted into us the importance of having a relationship with God, and she never used God as a means of manipulating us to do the ‘right’ thing.  Her answer was always, “pray about it”, even when I didn’t understand!  And we always would.

So, as a child, what was your experience like, with God or the church ?

As I grew older, I began to learn and notice some things that were very disturbing about the church. Things that made me question everything that I had been taught all those years. I’ll share more about it in my next post. 

(Continue to Learn about My Issues with The Church...)