{"id":4854,"date":"2010-08-28T14:37:32","date_gmt":"2010-08-28T13:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=4854"},"modified":"2010-08-28T14:37:32","modified_gmt":"2010-08-28T13:37:32","slug":"not-going-to-church-even-though-you-want-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2010\/08\/28\/not-going-to-church-even-though-you-want-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Not going to church (even though you want to)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/livingtext.wordpress.com\/2010\/08\/23\/a-church-home-at-long-last\">A post on an important\u00a0subject<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For the first time in our Christian lives we experienced the total despair of essentially giving up and not going anywhere for almost six or seven months. And I didn\u2019t miss it. I didn\u2019t miss the clueless worship, lack of Bible, historical ignorance, Great Commission absence or lack of community. If your church has no community, then staying home on Sunday isn\u2019t much different from going on Sunday morning except for the lack of driving and going through the motions in a service that grates on you from beginning to end as people ignore you on the way in and the way out. I can\u2019t justify not going \u2013 I know the commandment and I know I was not keeping it, but I didn\u2019t see any way to keep it and stay sane.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This is very well put.\u00a0 I myself had that experience 25 years ago, after a serious illness.\u00a0\u00a0I have never been a regular church-goer since, although I remain a committed Christian.\u00a0 Not because I do not want to be; but because I could not afford the drain of strength from non-church any longer.\u00a0 I would gladly support a church\u00a0 that supported me.\u00a0 As it is, my giving goes to St Andrew the Great in Cambridge, where I received the only help that I have received in all that time since.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This experience must be commonplace.\u00a0 Is there some way, I wonder, for all us Christians who can&#8217;t face the non-churches, yet remain faithful, to link up somehow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A post on an important\u00a0subject: For the first time in our Christian lives we experienced the total despair of essentially giving up and not going anywhere for almost six or seven months. And I didn\u2019t miss it. I didn\u2019t miss the clueless worship, lack of Bible, historical ignorance, Great Commission absence or lack of community. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[407],"class_list":["post-4854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianityunderthreat","tag-christianityunderthreat"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}