u/Nearby-Tension3515

My dad gave me an interesting explanation the other day for why Churches of Christ are so strongly opposed to musical instruments in worship.
His argument was basically that instruments represent a secular cultural influence entering the church. Once you allow instruments, you potentially open the door to other changes: more contemporary music, less traditional or reverent worship styles, changes to traditional gender roles, women taking on pastoral roles, and other practices that Churches of Christ have historically resisted.
In other words, he sees musical instruments as a kind of “Pandora’s box.” Once you allow one practice that isn’t part of the traditional Churches of Christ worship style, it becomes easier for other cultural influences to enter as well.
I’m not sure I find that completely convincing, especially because I think there’s a difference between using musical instruments and abandoning a particular theology of worship.
But I do think it’s an interesting explanation, because it suggests that the opposition to instruments isn’t only about the biblical arguments involving singing and the New Testament. There may also be a deeper concern about preserving the boundaries of the tradition and preventing outside cultural influences from changing the church.
I’m curious if anyone else grew up hearing a similar explanation for why Churches of Christ reject instruments.

I attended Churches of Christ my entire life, and I’ve always wondered what it’s actually like to attend a Church of Christ-affiliated college.
I was fortunate enough to end up going to a secular college. At the last minute, I decided to go that route, and my parents actually preferred it because the Church of Christ college I was considering was farther away and more expensive.
But I’ve always been curious about what I might have experienced if I had gone there instead.
For those of you who attended a Church of Christ college:
Are they as controlling as people might assume? How much freedom do students actually have to question Church of Christ beliefs?
I’m especially curious about academics. Do they have genuinely good history programs? How is church history taught? Is it presented objectively, including the historical development of Churches of Christ and other Christian traditions?
And what about preacher training? Are the Bible programs and ministry programs academically rigorous? Are professors encouraged to engage seriously with scholarship that might challenge traditional Church of Christ beliefs?
Most importantly, would you describe your experience as intellectually stimulating?
Could you openly question something even if your question made the traditional Church of Christ position uncomfortable or was there an expectation that certain conclusions were simply off-limits?
I’m not trying to insult these schools or assume they’re bad. I’m genuinely curious because I’ve never experienced one firsthand.
I realize these questions might be “rocking the boat” a little, but I’d really like to hear from people who actually attended one.
What was your experience like?

I’ve been thinking about this recently, and I genuinely don’t know where Churches of Christ fit within the broader Christian world.
They’re obviously restorationist in origin, but they’re very different from most Protestants. They’re strongly opposed to “faith alone,” extremely skeptical of denominationalism, and often reject traditions that most Protestants are comfortable with.
But they’re also clearly not Catholic or Orthodox. They’re generally opposed to sacred art, icons, elaborate liturgy, and the authority of church tradition.
And then there’s their approach to Scripture. Churches of Christ can be extremely literalist and restorationist, sometimes even more so than Catholics, Orthodox Christians, or other fundamentalist Protestants. Yet they don’t necessarily fit comfortably with fundamentalist Protestants either.
They’re also very distinctly American in their historical development, particularly because of their roots in the Restoration Movement.
So where exactly do you put them?
They’re too different from mainstream Protestantism to feel completely Protestant, too opposed to Catholic and Orthodox traditions to fit there, and too different from many fundamentalists to fit comfortably among them either.
I’ve also noticed that quite a few Orthodox YouTubers seem to have come from Churches of Christ, which I find fascinating. It makes me wonder if there’s something about the Church of Christ tradition that makes people especially interested in Catholicism or Orthodoxy once they start questioning it.
I’m not saying Churches of Christ are somehow completely outside Christianity. Obviously, they’re a Christian movement with a very specific theological tradition.
I’m just curious how other people categorize them.
Where would you place Churches of Christ on the Christian spectrum?

I’ve been thinking about some questions I’d genuinely like to ask Church of Christ preachers. These are hypothetical questions, but I think they’re important.
I’ve heard preachers acknowledge that throughout history, many people simply didn’t have access to the Bible. Some people were illiterate, copies of Scripture were extremely expensive, and there were periods when ordinary people had very limited access to biblical texts. I’ve even heard them acknowledge that there were times when people were actively prevented from accessing Scripture.
And I agree that we’re incredibly lucky to have the access to Scripture that we have today.
But here’s my question:
How does God judge the people who never had a Bible?
Why would God allow thousands of years of human history to pass without ordinary people having access to a complete Bible they could personally read and use to determine which church was correct?
And if the Church of Christ’s argument is that people are responsible for correctly understanding Scripture and becoming part of the true church, what about the billions of people who lived before that was realistically possible?
The modern Churches of Christ emerged from the Restoration Movement in the 1800s. So why did God allow Christianity to exist for roughly 1,800 years before the movement that supposedly restored the original New Testament church appeared?
This is one reason I actually find the Catholic and Orthodox explanations interesting, even though I’m currently agnostic/atheist and don’t necessarily accept either of them.
At least Catholic and Orthodox Christians can say, “The Church has always preserved and taught these traditions.” They don’t have to pretend Christianity historically functioned primarily through everyone independently reading a complete Bible and figuring out the correct interpretation.
And to be fair, even many Protestants will acknowledge the obvious historical problem: people didn’t always have access to Scripture.
Churches of Christ know this history. They know that for much of Christian history, people relied heavily on oral teaching, church tradition, clergy, and whatever access to Scripture was available to them.
Yet the sola scriptura approach can sometimes make it sound as though God simply expected everyone throughout history to pick up a Bible, read it for themselves, understand it correctly, and find the Church of Christ.
I genuinely don’t understand how those two ideas fit together.
I’m not necessarily saying that the conclusions Church of Christ preachers reach from Scripture are wrong. I’m questioning the worldview behind the argument.
Because once you take history seriously, I think you have to ask:
What about everyone who never had the opportunity to read the Bible, hear a Church of Christ preacher, or even know that Churches of Christ existed?
That’s the question I wish more people in the tradition would seriously wrestle with, rather than simply responding with another verse about the narrow path.
Maybe there are good answers. If there are, I’d genuinely like to hear them.

I’ve been hearing about this recently and I’m honestly confused.
Do all Churches of Christ have elders? Apparently not. From what I understand, some congregations don’t have elders and instead have a group of men who meet together to make decisions for the congregation.
If that’s the case, how does that work?
I find it especially interesting because Churches of Christ emphasize being “Bible only,” yet the New Testament seems to describe churches as having elders overseeing the congregation.
So how can a congregation operate without elders? And what exactly is the biblical basis for a “men’s meeting” making those decisions?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding how it works, but I’d genuinely like to hear from people who grew up in Churches of Christ.
How common are congregations without elders, and what is the reasoning behind having a group of men function in their place?

I’m going to try to limit myself to two posts a day on this subreddit, but this thought popped into my head and I really wanted to talk about it.
One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the difference between Catholic/Orthodox Christianity and Protestant Christianity, particularly the criticism that Protestantism is heavily influenced by liberalism and individualism.
The basic argument, as I understand it, is that Protestantism broke down much of the traditional hierarchy of Christianity and placed a much greater emphasis on the individual’s ability to choose what church, denomination, or religious tradition they belong to. Instead of having a centralized authority or established hierarchy, you have thousands of different churches and denominations, each interpreting Scripture for themselves.
And then I started thinking about Churches of Christ.
One of the things that really struck me is how Churches of Christ claim to reject religious hierarchy while clearly having forms of hierarchy and authority themselves.
They’ll say, “We don’t have a hierarchy. We just have leadership.”
But… isn’t leadership a form of hierarchy?
Think about a family. If you have parents and children, would you seriously say there is no hierarchy within the family simply because everyone has equal value as human beings? Of course not. You can believe that everyone has equal worth while still recognizing that some people have authority or responsibility over others.
The same thing applies to the church.
Churches of Christ have preachers, elders, deacons, and various forms of church leadership. Elders have authority over the congregation. Preachers have authority as teachers and religious leaders. There are clearly structures of authority.
Yet I’ve noticed that Churches of Christ often seem to get around the word “hierarchy” by simply calling it “spiritual leadership.”
And I’m not necessarily saying that’s wrong. Having leadership isn’t inherently bad. What I find interesting is the inconsistency when Churches of Christ criticize other Christian traditions for having hierarchy while insisting that their own authority structures somehow aren’t hierarchy because they use different terminology.
I’ve also been reading a preacher’s book about Churches of Christ, and he talks about the need to tear down “man-made hierarchies” and return to simple New Testament Christianity.
And that’s where I started thinking: What exactly makes someone else’s hierarchy “man-made” while your own system of elders, preachers, congregational authority, and religious leadership isn’t?
And then there’s the criticism of denominations.
I remember reading Muscle and a Shovel, and there’s a section where the author talks about Baptists supposedly being called Baptists because they follow John the Baptist, or something along those lines. And I remember thinking, Really? This is the argument we’re making?
It just seems like a straw man.
The fact that a church has a denominational name doesn’t automatically tell you what its members believe about that name. Baptists aren’t necessarily sitting around thinking, “We’re called Baptists because John the Baptist is our founder and we’re his followers.” That’s obviously not a serious representation of Baptist history or theology.
And honestly, the criticism becomes even more interesting when you consider the history of Churches of Christ themselves.
Churches of Christ emerged from the American Restoration Movement, particularly within the religious environment of the American frontier. So when Churches of Christ criticize other Christians for being part of denominations created by historical developments, while presenting themselves as though they simply dropped out of the sky as “New Testament Christianity,” I think that’s worth examining.
Churches of Christ have a history too.
They didn’t simply appear in the first century and survive unchanged for 2,000 years. They emerged from a particular historical movement, in a particular historical context, involving particular people making particular decisions about how Christianity should be organized and practiced.
I’m not Catholic, by the way. I’m basically religiously homeless at the moment. I’m not making this argument because I’ve decided Catholicism or Orthodoxy is automatically correct.
I’m just finding it increasingly difficult to accept the idea that Churches of Christ have somehow escaped the same historical and institutional realities that apply to every other Christian tradition.
They have leadership. They have authority structures. They have traditions. They have historical development. They have disagreements over interpretation. They have denominational boundaries, even if they don’t like calling themselves a denomination.
You can reject hierarchy, or you can defend your particular form of hierarchy. But I don’t think you can honestly pretend you don’t have one simply because you call it “spiritual leadership.”
That’s the part I’ve been thinking about.

So, Churches of Christ. I’ve talked about this a lot on this subreddit, but there’s one thing I keep coming back to: I feel like Churches of Christ sometimes have a vastly inflated sense of how large and prevalent they actually are.
For example, when they talk about being “the one true church” and the church that you supposedly see in the Bible, you’d almost expect Churches of Christ to be this enormous worldwide Christian movement. And, to be fair, they do have around a million members worldwide. But in the broader context of Christianity, that really isn’t very large. You could probably go to entire countries where most people have never even heard of Churches of Christ.
It’s a relatively small Christian movement—arguably one of the smaller movements to emerge from the Restorationist tradition. Yet there can sometimes be this strange assumption that Churches of Christ are so widespread and influential that people are going to specifically hate or persecute them simply because they’re Churches of Christ.
And then you ask: If Churches of Christ are the one true church, why are they so small?
This is where I often hear the response about the “straight and narrow” path and the narrow gate. The argument seems to be that the true path was always going to be difficult and that relatively few people would find it.
Okay, but then I have a follow-up question: Are Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Baptists, Methodists, etc., all simply walking through the wide gate?
And if so, do you really believe that all of those people are equally lost? Do you think a sincere Catholic or Orthodox Christian who genuinely believes they are following Christ deserves essentially the same eternal punishment as an atheist who rejects Christianity entirely?
At that point, the response often becomes something like, “Well, it’s right there in the Bible.”
But that brings me to what I think is the bigger problem with this argument: it assumes a very modern relationship with the Bible.
We live in a world where the Bible is incredibly accessible. You can buy one for a few dollars, read it online, download an app, listen to an audiobook, or find dozens of translations instantly. It’s easy for us to assume that everyone throughout history has always had that same opportunity to sit down and read the Bible for themselves.
But that simply wasn’t the historical reality.
For much of Christian history, ordinary Christians did not have personal copies of Scripture sitting on their bookshelves. Books were expensive, literacy was limited, and access to biblical texts was nothing like what we have today. Christianity existed for centuries before the printing press made mass-produced books possible.
So when someone says, “People should have just read the Bible and figured out the truth for themselves,” I think there’s an enormous historical assumption hiding underneath that statement.
The Restorationist argument makes a lot more sense if you assume that the Bible has always been freely available to everyone, that everyone has been expected to interpret it independently, and that everyone has had essentially the same opportunity to discover the “true church.”
But that’s not the world most Christians throughout history lived in.
And honestly, I think that raises some pretty difficult questions for the Churches of Christ. If God genuinely expects everyone to identify the correct church and follow the correct interpretation of Scripture, what about the billions of people throughout history who never had anything resembling the same access to Scripture that we have today?
I don’t necessarily have a simple answer to that question. But I do think it seriously complicates the idea that the relatively small size of Churches of Christ can simply be explained away with “the way is narrow.”

So recently, AOC, who I believe is a Democratic politician, though I’m not sure whether she identifies as a Democratic Socialist, came out and said that she was freezing her eggs. And, of course, people immediately started criticizing her. That’s fine. You can disagree with her decision. But instead of simply saying, “I wouldn’t make that choice,” people turned it into this huge moralizing crusade about how she’s a bad person, how she’s supposedly glorifying not having a man, and how she’s promoting something evil to women, all because she froze her eggs.
Apparently, that’s enough to send everyone into a moral panic.
Then you get the usual claim that women who don’t have children are inherently unhappy, that “all the studies” prove women regret not having kids, and that women are somehow ruining their lives by prioritizing careers or other goals. That is one of the most misleading pieces of misinformation that gets repeated constantly online. Yes, there are studies showing that some people regret not having children or experience sadness about being childless. But “all the studies show women are unhappy without children” is simply not true. There is research showing that people can live perfectly happy and fulfilling lives without having children.
And this is where Christianity comes into the discussion for me. Christians, especially certain Catholic apologists, keep pushing this idea that because reproduction is biologically possible, reproduction is therefore somehow our natural purpose. If your body menstruates, apparently that means you’re supposed to have children. This whole “natural law” theology gets shoved down your throat by people like Trent Horn and others, and it drives me absolutely insane.
The irony is that Christianity itself doesn’t even have a straightforward “everyone must have children” message. Paul literally argues in 1 Corinthians 7 that remaining unmarried can be preferable to marrying. Yet somehow modern Christian culture constantly treats marriage and reproduction as if they’re mandatory life requirements.
And that’s what frustrates me. You don’t have to agree with AOC freezing her eggs. You don’t have to make the same choice. But why does a woman making a personal decision about her own reproductive future suddenly become a referendum on whether she’s a good or evil person?
This is related to Christianity because Christianity was one of the primary lenses people were using to attack her decision and impose a particular moral framework onto her life.
Apparently, in the “land of the free,” you’re free to make your own decisions as long as the Christians around you approve of them.

Some are good some are bad.
Feel free to tell me about the elders you had when you were a coc member.

The other day, my dad mentioned at church that he had never heard the story of Esther before. I was honestly surprised because I don’t know how he had gone so long without hearing one of the more well-known stories involving a major female figure in the Bible.
That conversation eventually turned into talking about how the Bible has examples of “good” and “bad” women. You have women who are viewed negatively, but then you also have figures like Ruth and Rahab, who are presented more positively despite their complicated backgrounds. Rahab especially stood out to me because she was a sex worker, which made me think about how complicated the Bible’s views on morality and women actually are.
What I realized from that conversation was that my dad seemed to view women in a very simple “good woman versus bad woman” framework. He didn’t really talk about men in the same way or categorize male figures in the Bible like that.
It made me think about how much of a person’s worldview can be shaped by the way they interpret religious stories. In this case, it felt like women were often being judged through a much stricter lens, where they were either considered good or bad, with very little room for nuance.

Am I the only one who found the dating culture in the Church of Christ to be kind of pressure-filled?
I don’t necessarily want to call it toxic, because there are genuinely good people in the church, but I do think there can be a lot of pressure, especially in youth groups.
For example, I remember being encouraged by my youth minister and other people in the youth group to date a girl because we were good friends and everyone thought we would be a great couple. It wasn’t like anyone was forcing me, but after hearing it constantly from so many people, it started to feel like there was an expectation.
Eventually, we did try dating, and unfortunately, it ended up damaging our friendship. Looking back, I wonder if this is a common experience for other people. It seems like sometimes people in youth groups get pushed together because everyone around them thinks they would make a good couple, and it can create pressure that wasn’t naturally there.
Maybe it’s just my personal experience, but I’m curious if anyone else has experienced something similar.

What are your thoughts on him?

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?

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?

Maybe I’m being too harsh, so I’m curious what everyone else thinks.
I’m not calling Dhar Mann a bad person or saying he’s some evil YouTuber. But whenever I watch his videos, I keep coming back to the same thought.
It feels like a lot of his content isn’t just about teaching life lessons anymore. Instead, it often seems to promote a particular worldview—whether that’s pro-capitalist messaging, enthusiasm for crypto, or encouraging kids to pursue certain careers.
I’ve noticed videos that encourage children to become gamers, influencers, entrepreneurs, or artists. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those careers, but sometimes it feels less like, “Here’s a lesson about life,” and more like, “Here’s the path you should take.”
What concerns me is that his audience is largely made up of children and younger teens, who may not have the experience to think critically about those kinds of messages. They often take what they hear at face value.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I sometimes feel like the channel has shifted from telling moral stories to subtly promoting certain ideas about success, money, and careers.
Am I being unfair, or has anyone else noticed this?

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?

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’ve been wondering about this lately.
Today I went to church with my family, since I haven’t been with them in a while. The preacher was talking about heaven and how Paul longed to be with Christ, arguing that eternity should be our primary focus.
At one point, he brought up a Facebook post that said something like, “Christians focus so much on heaven that they forget about changing the world.”
What frustrated me was that, instead of engaging with the point being made, he immediately turned it into an apologetics argument. To me, the post was obviously criticizing the idea that some Christians become so focused on heaven that they neglect helping people in the present. But rather than discussing that concern, it felt like he argued against a different point altogether.
I’ve noticed this pattern before. Whether the topic is Catholics, Orthodox Christians, or another denomination, it often feels like the response is to quote a long list of Bible verses rather than really engaging with what the other side is actually saying. Sometimes it feels more like proof-texting than having a genuine conversation.
For example, I once asked my preacher about Catholicism. He described Catholics as believing that the saints “speak for God.” As far as I understand it, that’s not really what Catholics believe. They believe the writings of the saints are valuable and have shaped the Church’s tradition, but they don’t believe every saint’s writings are divinely inspired in the same way Scripture is.
That made me wonder whether people in the Church of Christ are sometimes taught simplified or inaccurate versions of what other Christians believe. Whether that’s intentional or not, it doesn’t encourage meaningful dialogue.
I’ve also noticed that the Church of Christ often presents strong critiques of culture or other Christian traditions and then supports those critiques by quoting a series of Bible verses. Sometimes that approach works, but other times it feels like it skips over the actual arguments being made.
Maybe that’s one reason some people become frustrated and leave. If people feel like their questions aren’t really being heard, quoting more verses usually doesn’t solve the problem.
To be fair, I know this isn’t true of every congregation or every member. I’m just describing a pattern I’ve noticed in my own experience.
What do you all think? Have you found that the Church of Christ generally engages with other viewpoints in good faith, or has your experience been different?

Hey everyone.
This is a more serious topic, and I’m genuinely curious to hear from the women here.
What was it like growing up in the Church of Christ knowing that you could never serve in certain roles? You couldn’t preach, lead the congregation, or pray publicly over men. In many congregations, it felt like your voice on spiritual matters carried less authority simply because you were a woman.
Did that ever cause you anxiety, frustration, or make you feel powerless? Or was it just so normal that you didn’t really question it at the time?
I’m asking because I grew up as a boy in the Church of Christ, and my experience was completely different. Boys were encouraged to get up in front of the congregation, read Scripture, lead prayers, and prepare to become future leaders. We had programs like Lads to Leaders, and a few years ago my congregation even started Leaderettes for the girls. Looking back, I realize I was always being prepared for leadership in the church, while the expectations for girls were very different.
I honestly don’t know what that felt like from the other side. I can guess, but I don’t know what women actually experienced.
Did you ever feel like you were being silenced? Or was it so ingrained that it just seemed normal?
I remember an ex-girlfriend of mine getting very passionate about this topic. One time a guy jokingly said something about “going with the girls tonight,” and she immediately became serious and said, “You know that’s a sin, right?” It made me realize just how deeply these ideas had been internalized. In some Churches of Christ, it almost seemed as if a woman speaking authoritatively about spiritual matters in front of men was treated as spiritually dangerous.
Am I the only one who finds that strange? Even by conservative Christian standards, it seems like a very unusual way of approaching women and leadership.
I’d really like to hear from women who grew up in the Church of Christ. What was your experience like? Did it affect the way you saw yourself, or did it not bother you at the time?