If YOU Go to Church
A follow-up essay talking about my experiences and some ideas on how to vet and evaluate churches

This is a sequel to my previous essay,
Should YOU Go To Church?
This is a contentious issue so feel free to share your thoughts and opinions, or to tell me to go to hell!
I’ll try to include as much helpful info as I can. I consider myself a veteran church explorer at this point after 4 years of meandering through American churches of every kind of denomination (even super-secret forbidden ones and cults), and being an intimate part of 2. Unfortunately very little of what I have to say is positive, and it’s not because I was ill-treated in the vast majority of cases (though I was often taken for granted): it’s because God’s name has been made mud by these institutions, and they have rendered themselves apostates, and they have denigrated Scripture to a point that it holds little meaning in Western culture anymore, and it’s all for the wrong reasons and due to gradual compromising and apostacy, which is called iniquity by God. And the ‘how’ of it all has as many different explanations as there are denominations (over 10,000).
One thing you should never ask American christians: is your church good, or how do you like it? You’ll never get an honest answer: they always think their church is good. It could be the most lying, reprobate, scandalous hive of scum and villainy on the planet and they’ll say, “Yeah it’s pretty good, I like it!” It may be a general issue in today’s culture that nobody is honest and 99% of opinions are garbage, but it seems even worse when it comes to churches. It seems like people genuinely have no baseline, no comparison, no objective parameters to use in judging a church and their experiences within it. It’s as if The Bible didn’t exist in an institution that is supposed to be based around it.
This is why I am here, dear reader, to share my experiences with you and try to educate you a little bit on how to evaluate churches, as well as show red flags to look for. There’s no ironclad rules or simple how-to guide for it, you will have to sharpen your own judgement, observe, learn, and compare to Scripture to reach meaningful conclusions. But I’ll hopefully be able to help you with some broad pattern recognition of red flags here and general truths in my opinionated way.
To be honest, I’m still not sure what to say on the theological front. I reached the end of my theological journey more-or-less 2 years ago, and refocused on community, which didn’t really end well. I emphasize sound doctrine but with a great caveat that I will spell out here: all theology is bad theology, I don’t believe in the entire field. It all takes us away from sound biblical doctrine, which is about matters of the heart and actual doing, not debate and empty words. It’s a bit of a catch-22 though: correctly interpreting Scripture generally entails at least some exposure to theology, but nobody was ever saved by theology, it is useless and isn’t biblically sound doctrine. I’ll attempt to tackle this oh-so-sticky of issues in a later essay and not here.
Onto the post
What to expect in churches
Expect little, you will receive little, but much will be asked of you. Going to church in postmodern America is a bit like being a camel seeking an oasis, and instead finding a small pool of mud that you must drink from through a straw. “Get fed! Get your bread!” It’s literally a little mudpool that isn’t even drinkable, clean water, what am I supposed to be getting here, syphilis or giardia? That is the baseline here. You should never question it because this corrupt institution makes lots of money on your taxes tithes and it’s all for their pockets for God. You are a reprobate evil heathen if you dare question an institution that builds an ever bigger palace and seeks ever more tax payers and asses in pews christians. They variously shame you into paying taxes to them or boasts of the blessings you will receive from it (tithe literally means 1/10. It was instituted in the Levitical law as a TAX to fund the Levitical priesthood as well as a fund for the poor), but absolutely none of this money is going to the needy. Not even within the same church, the needy among them! The needy aren’t speedy, they just aren’t connected and don’t know the right people (or spirits) and are clearly violating the law and not behaving “right” nor “according to our standards”. Ya, christians believe in the law and not grace when it concerns the needy or questionable, but believe in grace and not the law concerning themselves. Get on board goyim! They also love Jews more than any of their goyim Christians! Aren’t you in favor of genocide God’s will? Evangelicalism has jumped the shark completely.
Granted some of this equation changes when you look at other denominations, such as Catholics or Orthodox, but really not that much. They carry their own baggage too (going back 1500 years) and sorry, they don’t really believe in Scripture nor Sound Doctrine as a general rule. I’m the last man on Earth to defend Protestantism because American Protestantism is like a disease, it’s horrid, but that doesn’t mean Catholicism or Orthodoxy are clean and good, they are most definitely not. But they do typically perform much higher in regards to charity and loving-kindness to the needy and being anti-abortion at least, and I give them props for that, but it varies widely: it isn’t universal. Good and bad branches exist in all these denominations, but on average the Catholics are dramatically more likely to help you in the US than the Protestants. The latter will mostly just grandstand and claim solidarity with (sinful) single mothers.
So for churches, they will ask you for a lot and not offer you much. Oftentimes they won’t ask you for anything because they feel like they are imposing (they are, and they make money off your efforts but almost never pay you), but once you sign up woo-buddy: you’re gonna get milked for all you’re worth with unrelenting invitations back. But this is how you get into the community. Now you’re in the group, well done! You’ve provided free labor or money to a parasite, like a man knocking up a random girl. You’ve done it now and you’re in! And also you have a lifetime of returns you are expected to make, congratulations! And no, it never ends! Once you are identified as someone the church can milk, they will never let you go, but they also won’t give you much of anything to retain you. It’s a desperately sick mentality and this is the norm, prepare yourself before you volunteer or tithe. Your intentions do not matter, it is the great institution that matters! You are the bricks beneath our feet, comrade.
They’ll wring you out like a sponge and throw you out without so much as a ‘goodbye’. This is normal from “the church”, you just weren’t serving God hard enough! And before you call me out for my bitterness, which is probably justified, I’m not talking about my own experiences for the most part. I had a bit of this but I’m primarily talking about all the good people I’ve met in churches that serve and do good works and get shit on. I don’t put up with that for long myself; it’s all these kind, generous people (not like me I’m downright hostile once I’ve been used the slightest bit) that are wrung out like a sponge by churches that I’ve known and seen that disgust me. They’ll do it to you if you’re dumb or kind enough, no question. It’s a despicable pattern of behavior that is worse than what most ‘criminals’ have done. And it’s totally normalized behavior.
My firm recommendation is this: DO NOT VOLUNTEER AT CHURCHES! Not unless you’re court ordered to (been there done that). These are 95%+ profit-earning entities and they thrive on getting things for free (also tax-free), don’t enable them. Only work for or volunteer at a truly sincere church (the best are generally small community churches) and congregation that is helping the needy, 95%+ of them don’t give a shit about the poor and will straight up kick the poor out of their congregation, don’t be deceived. They only care about #1. This goes mainly for Protestant churches, but many catholic and orthodox are guilty of the same as well. They all vary tremendously.
Onto my experience
Seeing behind the veil twice
I became intimately involved with two different churches from opposite sides of the spectrum, interspersed with a great variety in churches/denominations, including mass with my Catholic brother.
The first was a small conservative church, the first I began regularly attending at the start of 2021 after renewing my faith for the first time in my adulthood (I was raised christian but left it in adolescence). A year prior my entire life ended from covid hysteria and I called on God and He answered. It was a unique sort of church and difficult to describe. The pastor was a charismatic figure with many followers. Some of the things I appreciated about this church and congregation were: the amazing scientific thinking (very anti-evolution and they were young-earth creationist, the latter of which I don’t really agree with but they had some good ideas), general open-mindedness to many topics (many a Nephilim discussion) and a very intellectual crowd (One long-timer was surprised I stuck with “this little science church”) and the general high-level of intellect on display and great topics being broached; it was activist politically, scientifically, and socially which was a massive improvement over the norm. I most definitely do not agree with everything I heard there, but it was a truly engaging and intellectually stimulating environment, and had a good group of people. I learned a lot at this church, particularly in terms of theology. They were suing the state over 1st amendment violations during COVID which is what attracted me, and I must say I admire their spirit to this day. This is where I heard Walt Brown’s Fountains of the Great Deep theory regarding The Flood, and it is excellent. Far better than any mainstream scientist has proposed, given that every culture has a flood story This church genuinely changed my mind about abortion and the murder of the unborn, which I was previously waffling about. I began going to abortion mills to protest this evil and talk mothers out of infanticide because of this church. But this was a hyper-dispensational church theologically, which I have learned in my studies, is not sound doctrine.
It’s funny that I look back on this church and my experiences here so fondly, because the breakup of the church hurt so many. I was a late-comer, and got a VIP backstage pass to its dissolution. The pastor died a little less than a year after I started attending, and I got all the dirt and hidden knowledge because I was on good terms with his mother and brother and spent a lot of time with them and comforted them in their loss. Turns out, everything was rotten and crooked behind-the-scenes. Tons of gossip, strife, fraud, and double-standards were going on; it was a huge disaster and a disgrace. I amazingly emerged un-scathed from the whole thing and believe I did not learn my lesson when I should have. Some of the people I knew from there were terribly wounded when the truth came out: it was all run like a mafia and there were so many issues being repressed that finally broke free with the pastor’s death. He was a chequered character but I admired him a great deal and still pray for his soul. I feel for ‘Claire’ who was an older woman being used and strung along this whole time (FOR 20 YEARS!), and who was never truly on the inside… learning about the awful drama and behind-the-scenes despicable gossip and behavior informed me a lot on how churches operated.
I was still naïve enough to think that these bad parts were not common or normal, but then I had many other experiences with churches.
Take two
After this experience I went on a theological journey, and tried all kinds of different churches, every kind, and moved to a different part of the US. The favorite I found was a Messianic Jewish church, but I later learned they were an unusually good one with a very good teaching pastor and not the norm.
I once again became involved with a church, on the (relative) opposite side of the spectrum. This was a large, aspiring megachurch: quite a different thing from a small niche church based on one charismatic pastor and his teachings. This was a business! In terms of theology and thinking it was much, much weaker: they can’t even fathom half the things we talked about in the first church. But they seemed like earnest people with good intentions. I was burnt out on my theological journey and thought, “The spirit and fellowship is what matters!” Oh how wrong I was. Their theology was still of the same zionist, unbiblical profile, though this time in a much more watered-down form. They also hosted some prominent zionist apologists…
Good intentions. The road to hell is paved with them, but surely good intentions is what matters.
I struck up with them by default, because I had moved across the country and tried a bunch of different churches out, and nothing was quite right. This aspiring megachurch became my best option by default and was close to my home. They also helped me out on court-ordered nonsense for which I was very grateful. I was essentially the poster-child for them once I became more involved.
But nothing moved nor developed. At least not in a positive way.
It’s the same shtick every week and in every group. I first volunteered and then was hired-on to do logistics for the church. But every single thing I did was based on: a special event or pageant, requiring a ton of work and investment for a 1-2 hour event, or taking care of various logistics that 90% shouldn’t even exist if they could just plan or organize effectively. It was all just shuffling things around, mostly unnecessarily based off of bad planning; none of this ever benefitted nor helped anyone besides our brave leader (and his loyalists) who make A LOT OF MONEY off it all (don’t worry, it’s all for god. He decides what god wants for him!). I was fine with it for a while but after a few months I saw that it was all just so… empty and worthless.
They were burning their merchants and companies they hired left-and-right because they just didn’t care and never spared a moment to think. I talked to the tent-rental-man who lost over $20,000 because they insisted he set up a massive load of tents before a big wave of thunderstorms, and a guy handling oven rentals who had to clean maggots out of the cookware because nobody bothered to do basic cleaning. I helped him clean them out, they smelled like a corpse. A strong pattern of thoughtlessness and nonchalance dominated the institution, and they just could not care less about anyone or anything that wasn’t serving them, they just wanted more asses in pews and tax tithe money. They even gave me some used appliances that required extensive cleaning, as gifts. I thought it was generous but then I saw that they were buying expensive new replacements and they just wanted to be rid of the stuff they didn’t take care of cuz it didn’t look good anymore.
Appearances are everything, didn’t you read that in The Bible?
I fell afoul of the same treatment: while I started out getting preferential and good treatment, once I was comfortably established in the slot they wanted me, doing what they needed done, no further attention was paid to me. I never even got the talk, just the treatment: This is your life now, you exist to serve the vestigial church organ now, we’re not here to serve you. Don’t ask questions and all we’ll give you is more work to service us.
Welcome to your church, it is the same as your school, same as your corporation, same as your government, same as anything else you’ve ever experienced. Welcome to the American corporate homogeneity, goyim!
When I received my first true spiritual wounding from “friends and brothers” I made in the church, on their watch with no oversight or accountability from the vestigial church organ, I became disgusted and appalled to an extent to where I couldn’t even work for the church anymore in good conscience. They had over 2,000 people attending on a Sunday (far more than I believed, I found that out later), and 3 pastors, no elders. There was 0 structure or path forward for growth here… I tried to rationalize it as, “They’re good-hearted people, here’s a group of people that cares and helps each other out, theology is not so important…” WRONG!
I went to their 12-step program and I found famine and thirst, not the fullness of Christ. Where is the living water? It was not here. Here, you must as usual keep coming back to ‘get fed’ and temporarily slate your thirst, no lasting deliverance or holy spirit was found here.
The irony is that I met several people in their 12-step program that had experienced true delivery. I’ve met many other people in many other places that had also been delivered from their addictions and sins, but not a single one of them was delivered here, in this church’s 12-step program. The greatest successes were those that came to share and tell us of their deliverance, but it was not found here, no not once. The people who came here that were NOT already delivered were conventionally narcissistic, users, abusers, bad actors, addicts, and liars, but if you dared to call them out you were going against God’s will. Because whatever the polis agrees on is God’s will, these 3 disconnected pastors with no elders nor structure nor divine revelation will absolutely back up whatever the popular opinion is. If you dare question it, you are a problem and must be excised. Don’t ask about elders or deacons or maybe paying the people who are setting up and doing great work and performing your money-making events!
PERISH THE THOUGHT!!!!!!!!!!! IT’S GOD’S WORK (but we get the dividends) shhhhhhhhhhhh—
Conclusion
In conclusion, I really don’t know what else I can say. If you’ve been fortunate enough to not be abused by a church or congregation, yet, you are very fortunate. Still, I do not envy you because you are like a newborn baby: you know not good nor evil, yet.
If you are new to the church as I was, I strongly recommend to not get involved. Denomination is really a formality at this point: Protestantism makes the most core mistakes and sins of Catholicism now. The church institution is of God and infallible, and this is the hidden core of Catholic teaching which is apostacy. Man’s traditions are greater than or equal to God’s word. What difference is there? One pretends to be traditional while really being anti-biblical (for 1500+ years, great legacy), one pretends to be truth in the current age while really being retarded. They all voted for Trump, who is now: pro-technocrat, pro-abortion, pro-Israel, pro-gay-marriage, need I go on?
What set of values even exists in the postmodern West? Do not dare quote Catholic or Orthodox retardation to me.
there is 0 difference between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Big secret here: wanna know why they schism’d big big in the 11th century? CUZ, THE HOLY SPIRIT ONLY EMANATES FROM THE FATHER! NO U LITERAL DEVIL, THE HOLY SPIRIT EMANATES FROM FATHER AND SON! This is the only difference between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, they are both retarded and the same. Orthodoxy wins style points though cuz their orthros is more traditional (literally the same since John Chrysostom in the 3rd century A.D.) Worst ever if you want new content tho.
The vast majority of both Catholic and Orthodox churches and parishes, and the absolute leadership of both are fake, gay, and pederasts. Nowhere in the actual Bible will you find a reason that priests should be celibate… no. Paul tells us that the ideal state is to be unmarried and refrain from sex, but “it is better to marry than burn with desire.”
The Catholic church (same as Orthodox) instituted celibacy for priests in the 8th century A.D., because they could then inherit the land the church was built upon. Prior to that it was inherited by the priest’s descendants because they were not forced to gay pederasty by the fake and gay papacy.
The greatest sin of Protestantism, in all of human history, was not revolting against the fake and gay Catholic church as some partisans would charge them for. That was a big win. No, the biggest and gayest failure of Protestantism was turning into the exact thing they fought against originally. As fake and gay as all forms of Catholicism are, at least they are honest. Catholics mince no words, they declare openly that their man-made traditions are equal or greater to Scripture.
Protestants pretend otherwise, and say they are “sola scriptura”. Not a single reformer from the 16th century truly promoted that perspective, and in fact the reformers were active in persecuting “heretics” (despite being “heretics”) and even burned them at the stake.
500 years ago some arguments could be made in favor of Protestantism, but we are so far past that that Catholicism and Orthodoxy generally look better. But all of the above are fake and gay.
Above every Western church it should read, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Not a single denomination is right, and all theology is bad theology. No, God did not vest power in the Pope… You will find as little reference to Popology in Scripture as you do to the 2-tiered Zionism that is taught in most churches. That is, 0: these are not teachers but butchers of Scripture.
Anyways I’ve rambled enough, leave me your thoughts below.
This time is not close to Christ’s birthday and is a pagan rite from our dear old Catholic friends.
Happy Solstice,
Shalom
I discovered the truth about "churches" after many decades of trying to find a good one. I was tossed to and fro by unsound doctrine in these so called churches, of many different denominations. It wasn't until, by the grace of God, that I sought Him and pleaded to know the real Biblical truth. I stopped reading books by professing Christian leaders, watching so called "Christian" programs on TV and went to our only source of truth, the Bible. We are promised the Helper, the Holy Spirit, to teach us sound Biblical truth. We just need to trust the Lord, to give us eyes to see and ears to hear.
First, I discovered that church isn't a building!! When two or more of like precious faith are come together, you are having church. My adult daughter and stopped attending these watered down, 501c "churches". The Bible is the foundation of our faith. We follow the Regulative Principle of Worship, so we we do not observe these pagan holy days, Xmass, Easter because we are not commanded to observe them in the Bible. Sadly, our family cannot not find anyone in our area who holds to these truths, just Christians from around the world, online. But Jesus said it would be so.
My favourite part of attending church, when I did, was Psalm singing at a Reformed Presbyterian church in Edinburgh (especially good when you had old-timers who knew how to do all the harmonies, it was euphoric) - a tradition the RP's made all their own with their many melody variations based on folk music. What a relief it was to be singing hearty bible songs about conquering and death compared to the terrible evangelical praise songs I was brought up with. That's what I miss.