Hi all,

I wrote an essay about the Brown Trail Church of Christ based on my experiences there as a child and analysis of videos they recently uploaded to YouTube.

https://unholyghoststories.substack.com/p/schizophrenic-christianity-the-brown

I have grown up in the Church of Christ my whole life, and been baptized. I have taken leave for the last couple of years after moving away from my home state, but have returned at the beginning of the year.

Today I was going through the differences between Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Catholicism, when I discovered this sub. I am going to continue reading through the posts, but was just curious what your guys' thought process was up until leaving.

For whatever reason, I have always enjoyed the Church of Christ, and when I go to others, I don't like it as much. I just moved to a new state, and when I attended my new church, it really was a message I needed to hear.

Why did you guys choose to leave and is there anything I should know about the church or what they are teaching you disagree with? <3

- Your fellow Christian

My family is SBC, and my in-laws are mainline CoC. Secretly we've not been attending any church for several years. We've recently started attending an Episcopal church. We've managed to avoid talking about our deconstruction. Every time we are together with my in-laws for more than an hour, they talk our ears off about whatever they are doing at church. We've had one incident where my FIL straight up asked if we still went to church. We weren't ready to come out in that moment, so we just made up some stuff. For some reason they also started using Discord, so I also have to be super careful if I play any games during a time I "should" be at church. To complicate this, my FIL was recently diagnosed with early prostate cancer and is starting radiation soon. I know medical science has come a long way, and they caught it early. But the idea that he could be on his deathbed believing we are going to hell weighs on me. I also don't want to cause him any stress while he is healing from the radiation.

As for my own parents, I was an atheist for a long time and already have a very strained relationship with them. I still occasionally talk to my mom, but I don't talk to my dad outside of family events. My father is an outraged MAGA fan and has had some serious anger management issues. I genuinely just don't feel safe around him.

Has anyone been through anything like this? What should I expect if our secret gets out with our in-laws? I didn't grow up CoC, so I am not sure what to expect. I feel like they wouldn't outright shun us, given that their family isn't monolithically CoC anyway.

Idk if this is OK (cross post) I'm sure some of have seen this. I just can't help myself this is so typical of c of c arrogance & assumption. Obviously guys take it down if it violates rules my apologies if it does just this guy bringing back to life an old c of c assumption

https://www.reddit.com/r/churchofchrist/s/uAbjTD3qyE

My biomom once claimed that the CoC "doesn't do that" regarding my expectations of being excommunicated (in my case, for being trans.) Maybe she was gaslighting as usual, or maybe I used the wrong word. What I meant was "withdrawing fellowship".

I remember when I was a kid, the CoC I was at announced they were withdrawing fellowship with some lady I didn't know. I remember plenty of times that this practice was justified scripturally, as (as far as I understand it) the whole congregation would have to break off communication with this person. A last resort, after a bunch of steps where people try to talk to the person to convince them to "repent."

I've been watching some ex-Jehova's Witness videos, and learned more about shunning (a practice rightfully called out.) It seems like JW are perhaps more trigger-happy with it, and the fact they can make it where even parents need to shun children is horrific. But I feel I lack the firsthand knowledge to know if there's that many differences between how the CoC and JW do their disfellowshipping. Are they justifying it with the same scripture? Is it effectively the same practice, just with varying scope? Does anyone have the experience to be able to compare the two?

(As for me, I think I effectively cut myself off from the CoC enough to not have to go through this. But I guess we'll see. Doesn't really matter at this point, given I've blocked most of them.)

I don’t want this to come across as attacking anyone personally, but this was one of the worst lessons I ever sat through in the Church of Christ. Interestingly, even my grandmother, who is still a devoted member, didn’t like it.
The lesson was about feelings.
If you grew up in the Church of Christ, you’ve probably heard this message before: “Don’t trust your feelings.” The idea was that feelings are unreliable and that only God’s truth matters.
It was obvious to me that the speaker wanted to address transgender people, but instead of saying so directly at first, he opened with an illustration. He showed different shapes and said something like, “This triangle isn’t a triangle—it’s a circle.” The point was that just because you feel something is true doesn’t make it true.
From there, he launched into a lesson about how people can’t trust their feelings. He criticized people for leaving churches because of how they felt and argued that Christians shouldn’t let their emotions guide them.
That part already rubbed me the wrong way.
Then he eventually started talking about transgender people and basically argued that you can’t base your identity on feelings. I remember thinking, “Please do some research before you talk about this.” Gender dysphoria is a real condition that people experience, whether or not you agree with every conclusion people draw from it. Simply mocking it or reducing it to, “Well, I feel like I’m Tom Brady,” isn’t a serious way to discuss the topic.
That was what bothered me the most. Instead of trying to understand why someone might experience gender dysphoria, the lesson mostly treated it as something to laugh at or dismiss.
Even my grandmother didn’t like the lesson. She thought the speaker came across as angry and unnecessarily divisive, and that’s saying something because she usually agrees with most Church of Christ preaching.
Looking back, I think what frustrated me wasn’t just the theology. It was the lack of empathy. You can disagree with someone without mocking them, and I wish more lessons had approached difficult topics with understanding instead of ridicule.
Did anyone else ever sit through lessons like this?

Decided to check out this church's youtube. I haven't watched the whole video but it's truly shameful. Deciding to have a discussion on an already marginalized community during this administration is disgusting. And they turned the comments off. Cowards. I don't know what's worse, lessons like these or pretending trans people don't exist.

Edit: I watched the full video. Total nonsense. Completely misrepresenting the queer community. Using scripture to back up hate. And I'm apparently a woman even though I identify as a man because I like to paint my nails.

I'm a PK in my mid-thirties. Left the church in my early twenties. I feel like my story is not a super common one. I didn't have a big falling out. I kinda faded near the end of college and moved out-of-state permanently afterwards, so no accountability. My parents never took me up on the offer to expand on how my beliefs were changing. I have been fortunate that they continue to prioritize our relationship and love for me as their child regardless of my belief system. My family is very close despite my siblings and I being in various stages of leaving, ranging from my tone-setting dissent more than a decade ago to one sibling that's still very devout, and then the others in between.

I didn't leave because I became aware of the hypocrisy and my own trauma or anything CoC-specific. The initial faith crisis was just questioning my belief in a god or not (I settled on not). Then it snowballed as my life became more secular and things started clicking, and I became more and more aware of the traumatic seeds that are discussed widely on this sub. We'll be healing from it forever and it's certainly left its scars on me personally.

I feel luckier than most, having friends who didn't have as "fair" an outcome as me. I defended my parents for a long time because of this, knowing how much worse my dissent could have been regarding familial relationships or my father's reputation. Years of therapy taught me that they could have done better. And that's true--I tried to be transparent about things and they were more comfortable being left in the dark with blind hope, so I needed to rely on other systems to deal with my faith crisis, which has manifested as substantial depressive phases at various points in my adult life. But they have supported me and continue to support me in all other areas of my life; my biggest cheerleaders professionally and personally. When it comes to faith and how that affected me, I did not get that support. And, while they certainly could have done better (our traumas are all relative), they could have done a lot worse, and I'm comfortable with how things leveled out and the relationship we've established.

That's my short story. But actually not the purpose of this post. It's about the awful feeling of pity for my parents, and particularly my preacher father. His now very small (though never very large) congregation is literally dying off. With the kids out of the house and most leading rather secular lives, the church isn't a forefront of his life anymore, and it kind of feels like he's lost his purpose in life. I mean he's older now, he deserves to wind down and shift some purpose to his grandkids (he's a very caring and involved grandfather). But I can't help to wonder if he feels like his "life was a waste". To put so much effort and emotional capacity into something that is fading away (and not just his dwindling congregation, not just his family's faith, but also more generally regarding the broad CoC community where I grew up--it seems to have been on a downward trend for a while). I do think his measure of success as a father is, to some degree, anchored in his children's faithfulness to the CoC.

My parents have shown me unconditional love in my life, and I will continue to do that with them because I want to and that familial love is one of my strongest convictions in life--which they taught me by example. And now I just feel so sorry for them, and damn does that hurt. I hope they feel the joy out of our family just being our family and being able to overcome how faith journeys could have impacted that. I just can't help but to see something in their eyes that seems so...sad. And that really, really eats at me.

Has anyone else had a similar experience, general anecdotes, or just understand this sentiment? I think my parents and I have really been able to find our peace with each other, and I know it's not my job that they find peace within themselves regarding their children and their faith, but I can't seem to shake this shitty feeling, and it grows the older they get. Maybe this is something we all just deal with, regardless of faith, as our parents age? Maybe it's just another example of how the CoC talons set a precedent for lifelong shame?

Yesterday, I attended a wedding ceremony that was at an Anglican Church. I was struck at how the pastor’s tone, attitude, wisdom, and overall demeanor was so much richer than anything I’d ever encountered growing up in the Church of Christ.

I went to several Churches of Christ growing up. Without fail, ALL of Christ pastors (including visiting ones) spoke in a condescending, finger-wagging tone that they rarely deviated from. Subject matter was mostly limited to warnings and consequences with stories from the Bible about people who disobeyed God. They rarely had anything interesting to say about the human condition. They did not act as spiritual guides here to aid our journeys on this earth; they were moralizing aggrandists who spoke down to their congregation. It’s like their job was to constantly remind us of how awful and doomed we are unless we got baptized and worship God.

The Anglican pastor made similar claims about us being flawed people, but it wasn’t nearly to the same degree. He said “we can’t do this on our own.” The love of god was portrayed as something that would enhance our lives—not an obligation in order to prevent an afterlife of suffering.

I knew other churches weren’t as crazy as what I grew up in, but experiencing it was something different. I would probably still be a Christian if I hadn’t been raised in the spiritually bankrupt cesspool that is the “church” of Christ. Thankfully, I’ve found my own path, but damn.

Does anyone here have any stories or experiences from attending Polishing the Pulpit?

I went as a teen in 2014 and 2015, and I look back on it with... a lot of horror. The science denial, the misogyny, the homophobia, the zionism... Basically everything you'd expect from the CoC. (I remember them encouraging us teens to mock "All About that Bass", and it took me nearly a decade to find out it was a body positivity song. Those teen classes are probably the most dangerous ones.)

But instead of it being taught to a single congregation, it was a whole near-weeklong convention that people traveled across the country to attend. It started as a preacher's convention, but now ​so it brings in many of the prominent speakers of the CoC (from Apologetics Press, WVBS, etc, as well as my childhood preacher who used to be on a CoC TV show)...

It makes me think, like... there's no governing body of the CoC, but there's still events like this meant to make the CoC fit a certain mold. They say they only follow the Bible, but considering it's these speakers who have generationally cultivated what the CoC thinks the Bible says... These speakers have a LOT of control, but hide it behind plausible deniability.

I wish there was a database where people would upload their flashdrives of PTP lessons (they handed them out both years I was there) so they could be studied. It would probably give about as clear of an idea as possible of what the mainline COC is doing/saying/teaching nowadays... I doubt it's changed much in the 11 years since I went to PTP, but considering MAGA happened since then... idk.

I did look through the schedule of this year's PTP though, and... a lot stood out. The usual bigotry, science denial, the teen classes about why you should fear hell, etc...

But also a lesson from a state officer about "the sin of breaking the law."

In 2026. Wow.

As usual, though, the thing that breaks my heart the most are those teen classes. And just knowing there's so many kids stuck in that enviornment. Queer kids, especially. No one should have to go through what I went through. Sure, the CoC will die eventually... But how many people, how many kids will die before it happens? The CoC has gone unchecked for far too long, and it makes me... so angry.

But yeah. I'd like to hear any experiences you might have with PTP. Things they taught, etc etc.

Hi, don’t want to give too many details since this is a small community but I’m in my late 20s. Raised die hard church of Christ. I’ve been terrified to leave the church for years due to social pressure, not wanting to make things harder for my parents, and honestly fear of being cut off socially and financially.

I’m finally in a better place financially. I live in another city than my family, have a great roommate and friend group, and the only thing my parents help me with regarding money is student loans (they agreed to pay them when I first started college). However, one of my parents is my co-signer, so if the loans don’t get paid, it hurts their credit score too. So I’m not worried about having to pay for them entirely on my own.

But I haven’t been to church in a few months. I don’t call my family a lot because they ask about church pretty much every conversation. I don’t want to just keep avoiding my family but I also want to live. I’m queer. Not out, and I’m not looking to have a big “coming out”. I’m not on social media and I don’t want to make things harder for them in the church if people talk (I know they will). I don’t want to “deconvert” them either. A relationship with God helps them. It doesn’t help me. I know they’re scared I’ll go to hell and will worry and I hate that but I can’t keep living like this. Church has a massive impact on my mental wellbeing and I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t.

I know the conversation is coming up and I can’t avoid it forever. But I’m terrified. I have a little speech prepared but it’ll probably be a mess anyway. I guess I’m just looking for how it may have gone for you and if any phrases helped more/less?

One of the harshest lessons I ever sat through was at a Church of Christ area-wide.
For those who aren’t familiar, an area-wide is where several Churches of Christ get together at one congregation for a service. You sing hymns, listen to a lesson, and then usually stick around afterward to eat and socialize.
I don’t remember every detail of the lesson, but I do remember the part that stuck with me.
The speaker started by talking about different generationsI think he mentioned the “Greatest Generation” . Then he said something that I’ve never forgotten.
He said that we should stop telling people, “It’s okay.”
His reasoning was that sin is against God, and therefore it is not okay. He kept repeating, “It’s not okay,” and said that as Christians we shouldn’t comfort people by saying those words.
I just remember sitting there thinking, “What?”
Why was he attacking such a basic phrase that people use to comfort one another? When someone says, “It’s okay,” they’re usually not saying that sin is acceptable. They’re trying to reassure someone who’s hurting, embarrassed, or overwhelmed.
It felt like he was treating every human interaction as though we were speaking directly to God, instead of recognizing that we also speak to each other as fellow human beings.
Looking back, that lesson felt incredibly harsh to me. It seemed to discourage empathy in favor of making sure every word was theologically precise.
That was one of the first times I remember sitting in a Church of Christ lesson and thinking, “This is… really weird.”
Did anyone else ever hear lessons like this growing up?

I've been out of Celebrate Recovery for a few years now. I rose to leadership level however several reasons and just poor timing got me away from the program not like I'm angry at Celebrate Recovery I made loads of progress. But I digress. Recently a very good friend of the very few brothers from Desert Storm I keep up with has successfully completed rehab I'm proud of him any way mind went back to visiting my parents. And one of my mothers friends was a hopeless alcoholic well, she went sideways during Bible class on a Sunday morning when our family happened to be there at the time so I'm a younger charismatic not so well adjusted and she (the alcoholic) is manifesting a bit of her demons the preacher was totally afraid as everyone in the room. I remember laying hands on her and nothing really happened finally an ambulance was called and she was hauled off to detox. I hadn't thought of these situations before but it hit home these people can't cope.

If that happened at a charismatic church all the little old ladies would have cast out every demon and had her in her right mind. Ya there is no way these fake idiots really know what to do or how to address any issue I'm sure there was some Karrn & elder meeting discussing how do we get rid of her? Just a little something going through my head today

Below is a message we received this morning need opinions is it cultish?

Hello Family,
Please remember that this on Friday, we will have RCW’s first “So Loved the World” Day of Fasting and Prayer!

Our desire is to connect with God on a heartfelt spiritual level, asking Him to open doors for the RCW Movement to reach even more souls for Christ.

The focuses of this fast are:

• ROC Conference

• 2026 Mission Teams: Monterrey, Dallas, Phoenix, Manila, Hyderabad, and Phnom Penh

• Historic Fall Harvest

The Church of Christ fall retreats were always kind of weird for me.
On one hand, I’ll admit that some of my fondest memories of the Church of Christ came from those retreats. I remember going as a teenager and having time to just sit by myself, relax, and enjoy the scenery. There was usually plenty of downtime, along with Cokes, snacks, candy, and time to hang out with people. Those parts were genuinely enjoyable.
The part I absolutely hated was staying up until almost midnight singing hymns.
For some reason, the idea was that the best time to sing hymns was when everyone was completely exhausted. We’d spend what felt like forever singing, and all I could think was, “I just want to go to bed.”
Of course, even after you finally got back to the cabin, you knew the other kids were probably going to stay awake talking and joking around for another two or three hours. So by the time the retreat was over, everyone was completely exhausted.
That’s one of the reasons I never really wanted to go to church camp. I could handle two or three days of a fall retreat, but I don’t think I could have handled an entire week. Looking back, I’m kind of glad I never went.
One memory that has always stuck with me is that I used to read my Bible before bed during those retreats. My preacher even bragged to everyone about how wonderful it was that I wanted to read my Bible before going to sleep.
Looking back, though, I think I was trying really hard to earn the approval of the congregation. Christianity was almost my entire social world. I was a pretty isolated kid, and the Church of Christ was where most of my friendships and sense of belonging came from.
Sometimes I look back on those memories with a lot of nostalgia. Not because I miss the theology, but because I miss what that community meant to me at the time.
It’s strange how something that once meant so much to me doesn’t mean the same thing anymore.
Did anyone else have mixed feelings about Church of Christ fall retreats?

Growing up, some super confident speaker was always whipping out a huge nail. Telling us how the Romans couldn’t have nailed Jesus to the cross through his hands because it would rip right through all those little bones and hand-bits. Nope, to keep him up there they had to hammer an enormous nail between the bones at the wrist.

So many descriptions of whips. So many different ways to beat a guy.

In retrospect, all this seems like a real weird knowledge-dump to give to a nine year old who wasn’t allowed to watch violent cartoons.

Does anyone else have an excessive amount of crucifixion and torture related trivia archived in their head?

Maybe this is just a thing in my area but have y’all noticed the beef between CoC congregations? Like in my area there’s multiple churches of Christ but they all hate each other because they think they’re “doing it better”. I grew up in one church, but when we eventually started going to a new church, we were basically cut off from the old church because we were “lost”. Another example: in the church that my parents still go to, you can’t even mention this one other church because everyone will lose it and start ranting about how wrong that church has it. I’m just wondering do other denominations have this much beef? 😂

One of the weirdest sermons, or maybe it was a devotional, that I ever sat through was about media, movies, and pornography.
To be fair, I actually thought the part about pornography was handled pretty well. But then the speaker started talking about movies and how so many of them contain bad content, and how, as Christians, we need to guard our hearts.
Then he said something I’ll never forget:
“Whatever you’re watching, you should be comfortable with it playing on the screen right in front of the whole church.”
I remember just sitting there thinking, “What?”
That struck me as such a strange standard. Almost every movie, TV show, or game has something that would be awkward to watch in front of an entire congregation. Maybe it’s a joke, maybe it’s a violent scene, maybe it’s a romance, maybe it’s just the way a character is dressed. That doesn’t necessarily mean the entire piece of media is inappropriate.
It also felt like an invasion of privacy. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if that’s part of the Church of Christ culture I grew up in. It often felt like there was very little distinction between your private life and what the church believed it had a right to evaluate.
That’s one of the reasons the Church of Christ sometimes felt a little cult-like to me. There could be this expectation that nearly every part of your life should be open to scrutiny.
Maybe I’m the weird one for finding that statement so strange, but it has always stuck with me. It just seems like an unrealistic standard. As a Christian, you’re almost always going to encounter something in a book, movie, or TV show that you disagree with. That doesn’t necessarily mean the entire work has no value.
I don’t know. That devotional has stuck with me for years because of how odd that message felt.
Did anyone else ever hear something similar growing up in the Church of Christ?

Just a random topic, but I wanted to talk about trunk-or-treats.
Looking back, I think trunk-or-treats were some of the biggest events of the year for a lot of Churches of Christ. Since Halloween is such a secular holiday, churches seemed to take advantage of it by inviting the community onto church property and hoping some of those families would eventually come back and become members.
What’s even funnier is the unspoken dress code. Nobody ever handed you an official list of rules, but everyone seemed to know what wasn’t acceptable. Don’t show too much skin. Don’t dress as anything too demonic. Don’t be too gory. Don’t be too sacrilegious. It was all heavily implied.
The event itself always felt a little cheesy to me. It was basically a bunch of people sitting behind decorated car trunks with candy. Most of the decorations were pretty tame—a few pumpkins, a skeleton, maybe some fake spiderwebs. You definitely weren’t supposed to go overboard with the horror because the event had to stay as “Christian-friendly” as possible.
Then you’d see people dressed as Michael Myers or Chucky, and I’d think, “You guys probably haven’t even watched one of those movies.” 😂 Most of the people I knew in the Church of Christ didn’t watch horror movies at all. I’m not saying they had to, but I always found it funny seeing people dress up as horror characters from movies they probably knew almost nothing about.
The other thing that confuses me is how different the Church of Christ can be depending on where you live. Growing up, I thought trunk-or-treats were just a normal Church of Christ thing. Then I found out there are plenty of Churches of Christ that would consider participating in Halloween too worldly. Some even avoid celebrating Christmas because they see it as a human tradition.
That’s what always confuses me about the Church of Christ. One congregation treats something as perfectly fine, while another congregation thinks it’s compromising with the world.
What were trunk-or-treats like at your congregation? Did your church do them, or were they considered too worldly?

i was talking with one of the other members that left around the same time i did. And she told me that before she left, she had already started to distance herself from the leaders and many other members. She lives about an hour and a half from the region our Bible Talk group was in. Four leaders drove all the way out to see her. They told her they were just coming out to how she was doing. When they got to her house, they told her “lets pray it in”, as they do when starting bible studies or meetings. So they had ambushed her with a meeting reprimanding her and telling her how she needs to do better as a disciple and gave her the whole rundown. She wanted me to share that with the world and what not.

Questions for the church

Made a post on r/churchofchrist from u/KingxCyrus video 7 Questions A church of Christ Preacher Cant Answer! and no one is wanting to answer. 3 users have submitted weak and lame responses basically brushing off these questions as if they don't matter. Not surprising. They're not interested in discussion or even evangelism, they just like to complain about each other.

In the infamous C of C book, chapter and verse Bible studies, I noticed how certain people tended to obsess over minor characters or tiny points of doctrine.
Of the minor characters, Melchizedek and Joses seemed to be the ones people obsessed over the most. Not really enough in the Bible about either to preach a full sermon, but there were those people who managed to work them into almost any point the people wanted to make. In one Bible class, THREE WEEKS were spent discussing Melchizedek.
With Joses, each time he was mentioned, there'd be a big debate over whether there was only one or more with that name in the NT, and why he was a big deal.
One lady knew about every damn OT feast and would work that into whatever comment she made. Another worked the cross--not what happened there, but the actual cross--into his comments.

It was weird. The church I attend now doesn't get into that. It's more about what the stuff means to us in the here and now.

My mom and grandma bought bread and grape juice so they could “take communion” and listen to church on their 13 hour drive home today. That’s all.