Is church a good place to socialize?

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I HATE being around people alone. Dad suggests I go to the church down the road on Sunday with my 15 year old sister BUT when I went in the past 5+ years ago I heard LOUD Chorus music and ran out in tears crying. I believe in God but find the OMG! pray for me Facebook posts as silly. When we remodeled houses at one time when I was a kid we sold to a black lady that had a room with 100+ Jesus pictures SHE WAS CRAZY!

The HALELOUYA! Screaming grated my ears and I didn't find it fun AT ALL!

But dad thinks meet good Church folk find friends potential Boyfriend/husband etc.

But I'm not some GOD PSYCHO!

I HOPE you are well and IMO none of my family/friends are sick and stay healthy but I'm not OMG! pray pray pray type!

Church is a great place to socialize if you are young, single, educated, talented, good-looking and wealthy.

I'm 29 nearly 30 (in March). Yes I'm single but being unemployed at the moment I'm broke not a dime.

Not pretty either LOL!

The next best thing is a Bible study group. Most that I've been to don't seem to place a lot of emphasis on monetary wealth, but the people seemed to appreciate good cooking.


By the way ... "pretty" is largely subjective.

Maybe, every church is different

My former therapist suggested it, but it seemed like the height of hypocrisy. I wonder how many church goers attend solely for networking.

A quick search yielded This Article ...

It may be a bit of a stretch to conflate "networking" with "fellowship", but there it is.

OMG NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Avoid church, avoid Christians, church disowned me for being different and I doubt they will treat you any different. They are prefect people and your a filthy sinner, I am beginning to lose faith in God myself. I can't picture him being a nice person if his followers treat people like that.

Nonsense. I'm none of the above and I am accepted by the members of the church I attend.

Sounds like you people went to fundamentalist churches. I would sooner be hung than attend one of those.
In the Lutheran churches I have attended, the emphasis is on Scripture, where Jesus clearly stated that :
A) We are all sinners, saved only by his Grace; and
B) All sins are equal ( " If you have committed one sin, you have committed them all."), so no one is any better than anyone else.
These two points rather negate judgmental behavior.

Jesus also brought up eternal torment for sin, something that was absent in the old testament. It was nice of him to add that bit. but I digress, this isn't about making friends with Jesus (for the record, I would not be his friend), this is about making friends with real people. So, if religion is an important part of your life it does make sense to meet some people who share similar beliefs and values. I find people with similar beliefs and values at rock clubs and house parties, so I tend to avoid church people whenever possible.

No, churches are full of old people.

Gehenna was just a rubbish dump by the way, like an incinerator. He didn't mean eternal torment, he meant gone forever, like if you throw out something into the rubbish dump and it burned up it was gone forever. If you threw out a book and it burned up there was no way you could get it back again. It was just gone, which is the same view of death as is presented in the OT. The new concept he introduced was eternal life in heaven. When he first mentioned it his disciples had no idea what he was going on about. Just before he died he said he was going away to prepare a place for them. They asked him, "where do you want us to follow you?" thinking he meant a specific location on earth. Anyway, I digress... and you may probably think that's just my take on it anyway. Not a believer in hell, never have been.

I find church difficult for socialising because there are just too many people in the one room and its hard to get to know people. I have met people through church, but it took a long time for me to get the friendship going, but then I am British, so I don't know if we are different over here. I find the people who grew up together and have always gone there have a clique and the newcommers like me take a while to fit in, especially with my lack of conversational skills. I have never been to a church with hallelujahing or boisterousness, so I can't relate to that.

There's too many young people at my local church, it makes me feel old... lol. I really wish I was 10 years younger or I wish I'd had a group like that when I was their age. They are really nice kids.

Sorry, I don't know what the answer is. I think you have to decide for yourself if it's something you want to do.

(sorry, first post on here and I double posted and don't know how to delete...

Last edited by Sparkly on 22 Oct 2015, 11:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It can be a good place to meet people if you go to the right kind. To be honest, some are just not very good examples of Christianity, which is sad. But- there are good ones out there with open-minded people who will actually talk to you and get to know you. Whether or not you have a good social experience at church has a lot more to do with the individual personality types involved than it has to do with the religion. Some places are made up of laid-back people, some are made up of snobs. The one I go to is a mixed bag. Lots of nice people who aren't too critical along with some ultra snooty, too-good-for-you people (you know, kind of like it was in high school...). I try to hang around the nicer ones and don't attempt to get too close to the others. Kinda starting to see that it's like that wherever you go-work, school, church. There are nice and not-so-nice people pretty much everywhere. Just keep looking around for a place with more of the good ones. They're out there, I promise

I guess you just have to find the right type of church. The Catholic church I go to is really laid back and people are super friendly, although I haven't been in a while. I was friends with a few people in my youth group. Sometimes we would play games and have potlucks, sometimes we would break out the NES and play Super Mario Bros. I don't really go anymore because I always felt out of place. I never really learned many church songs or had read much of the Bible. I hadn't even done my second year of Catechism. We had this thing called "Faith, Family, and Friends" where sometimes we would have dinner get togethers in one of the common rooms, sometimes we had pizza parties and ice cream parties, and sometimes we even watched movies!