Wasting hours of my mortal life every sunday morning.
Getting less sleep when I could have slept in.
3. Growing up as a kid I use to sit in the middle between my mom and my older brother. Every sunday, It was my duty to keep them awake during the long boring sermons.
I would constantly tap their shoulders to wake them up, and my brother would get really annoyed for me waking him up and he often claimed he was “praying” even though I could hear him snoring. My mom often told me to tap my brother’s shoulder to wake him up. Once she even scolded me for not waking her up in church. Ever single damn sunday I was the waker upper.
The people are not actually friendly, they just wan’t to hold you up and waste your time after church. Rarely even greeted before the service starts.
No where in the New Testament does it say one MUST go to church every sunday.
Growing up, I was often the only one ready on time before church started. Since I was a kid, I couldn’t drive my self, so I was late along with my mother and brother. Late every damn sunday.
Had no choice to refuse going to church.
Every summer I come home from college to live with parents for obvious financial reasons, and when i come home. I’m required to go to church every sunday with them.
Its always hot and stuffy in church.
The holy spirit makes me light headed and dizzy. I often have to grab the pew and hold my self up so I wont blackout as my vision fades to yellow.
Shrug. Don’t go. If your parents are supporting you and *forcing *you to go, convince them it’s stupid. You’ve got a good list. Add 13, “there is no god, so why bother?”
If church is so boring that everyone is sleeping through it, why does the rest of your family feel compelled to go? Sounds like all of you could benefit from less church and more sleep. Or a different church that is more interesting/has a better HVAC system. Or something.
Try Catholicism. The sermons are shorter and you do a lot of standing up and sitting down throughout the service that helps you stay awake.
Would you be able to get a weekend job that requires you to work on Sunday mornings? It may also result in less sleep than you’d like, but it could give you a reason not to go to church.
Is it a fundamentalist church that preaches hell fire and brimstone? Does the pastor rant at length about the evil secular life and the War on Christians and gay marriage leading this nation to the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah? Does he insist that the Earth was created in 6 days about 6000 years ago, and everyone who believes in that Communistic stuff like Evolution will be damned to eternal hell? Does he juggle with snakes?
My wife and I joined an Episcopal Church when we got married and went to the Sunday morning service, and it was like death. Not only was it an AM service, the sermon usually sucked, and lets just say Anglican hymns dont quite have the same “energy” as lets say a Black Baptist church.
Then we found out there was a Saturday 5pm service: no hymns, it was only one hour, a handful of attendees and the Canon really did a good job with her sermons. I regret for whatever reason we just stopped going about 10 years ago but it is on my “guilt list” to start trying to attend again.
Well, as for the latter, I wouldn’t go quite that far. It’s possible that our OP feels that there is a God, just not one that takes attendance at church every Sunday.
I agree with other posters: just don’t go. As a child, I hated going to church every Sunday–I couldn’t sleep in, I was forced into “Sunday best” clothes early on Sundays (“You can’t go out and play; you’ll get your good clothes dirty!”), and it was boring and no fun. It’s no wonder I haven’t regularly attended in years, don’t belong to any specific church, and don’t attend church to this day. (I make exceptions when local churches ask me to perform music at Sunday services for them–for me, playing and performing music is fun; and if a church wants me to do it–it’s *still *fun.)
Maybe you are attending the wrong church? Perhaps your parents would respect you selecting a church of your own. One that is maybe more modern, less stuffy, and more aimed at your and your age.
