Why should I go to church when it’s full of hypocrites?
In the last six days I have had this statement/question asked of me by two different people. The first is my eighteen year old daughter; the other is a late twenty-something former student of mine who has kept in contact. Both are Christians and both young ladies have had difficult lives to say the least. Both want to do what is right and are looking for the sweet fellowship, support and love from brothers and sisters in Christ that we all need and desire. Both are members of a church that for various reasons no longer offers that love, support, and fellowship to meet their needs.
Hannah, my eighteen year old daughter, recently told me that she no longer goes to church because the one she was going to is “full of hypocrites.” She then told me that her pastor had an affair on his wife; for that reason, she was not going back to church but was going to read her Bible at home. She even added that no where in the Bible did it teach that one had to go to church. She was totally unfamiliar with what the apostle Paul wrote: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching (Hebrews 10:25).
Monday morning, I ran into my former student at the post office in the town where I live. As we exchanged pleasantries, she asked me if she could ask me a personal question – she asked what I thought she should do about going to church. She told me that she did file for divorce in May 2012 from her husband of eleven months. When she moved back home with her infant daughter, she began attending the church where she grew up. She had sweet memories of what it was like when she was a child and wanted her daughter to be surrounded by that kind of warmth, support, and love.
Instead, she became an object lesson for her church, was asked not to participate in (or offer support to) certain church ministries. She was further disheartened when another young woman, divorced since January, was asked to teach a vacation Bible School class; when she asked why the pastor or youth minister why she could not help, she was not told any reason except it was not her place to question the decisions of the church leadership. She was not angry about it, just deeply hurt. She told me that she was done with churches since there was obviously a perceived double standard.
As we talked for another ten minutes I was asked how I would have handled the situation – the rejection of service by the leadership of the church. I shared with her an experience I had in 1996 – I had been married for three years and had been medically discharged from the U.S. Army in March of that year. My wife left me to move in with her old high school boyfriend, taking my children with her. At the time, I was the song leader of a small, independent Baptist church and because of what I was going through, I was asked to immediately resign all my positions within the church. The pastor of the church did tell me why I could no longer serve; I was told that Jesus cannot use divorced people in the ministries of the church! For the next handful of years I struggled with church attendance, “hypocrisy” of the church, and not trust[ing] in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).
