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What has been your past experience in local church attendance? Explain the positive and the negative.
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I have been serving the Lord since 1995, and even before that, I have witnessed both positive and negative experiences in my journey with God in numerous Deaf churches. Some churches have an extreme legalistic system, which made me feel uncomfortable and even involved spiritual abuse, where there was a lack of grace, compassion, kindness, and love from the members of the congregation. On the positive side, some churches have shown full grace, compassion, kindness, and love, even when rebuking with kindness. Unfortunately, some church members disrespect others’ relapses into sin by badmouthing or spreading exaggerated information that strays from the original truth. My relationship with pastors has also been a mix of positive and negative experiences.
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Local church attendance is really good around here. I believe the smaller churches get a better attendance due to the 1 on 1 relationships you can build with other believers. I also have noticed that every-time Satan throws an obstacle at our churches the ones that Gods present with survive and thrive while the ones that dont have the personal relationships and discipleship (aka good attendance and passion while attending) will fizzle out all together.
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I come from a small town church where roughly 100-120 people come every Sunday. the positives are that the community of members is super solid people who enjoy fellowship. The negatives are there have been a core community with guests visiting for the holidays with no real follow up that I’ve seen. We get new members occasionally, but not on a regular basis.
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Our family attends church every week. We don’t discuss missing church, unless there is a major emergency like kids being sick or travel. Even with travel, we try to leave after church. Missing church really effecting us negatively. We don’t get to be with the Body. We recently moved states and the idea of not being in a local church really effecting us but by God’s grace, we were able to find a solid local church.
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Initially, since I hadn’t grown up in the church, there was a lot of intimidation in the idea of going to church. The first church I attended was very seeker friendly and large (it was easy to slip in anonymously). My experience there was great in the sense that it really directed me toward understanding what I believe. However, as I wanted to dwell deeper, I noticed that the teaching was limited in depth and that a lot of the small groups lacked longevity. Although that church was great for me, I think it was geared more toward seekers, and I think I had moved past that stage in my faith.
I have been attending my current church for about four years now – It has a lot of strengths, such as expositional preaching, courses to increase knowledge, and strong member groups.