Attending.

As a favor to a dear friend, I accompanied her to Lakewood Church in Houston, Tx. so that she wouldn't have to go alone with her parents who were visiting. After the "service" aka How to Get Rich Seminar and Surreal Rock Concert, Joel Osteen put his hands on my pregnant belly and started praying. I was mortified.

I visited a non-denomination church once. There were people up front that were praying at the end of the service when all of a sudden some of them fell down and started rolling on the floor and shaking. The pastor said that they were filled with the “Holy Spirit”. This freaked me out and I couldn’t find the exit soon enough. Needless to say, I never went back to this church. Just fucking bizarre behavior!

As far as I can recall someone threw water over me and called me names, it was called a christening. I never went there again...

My worst experience in church was when our Southern Baptist Church was having a revival. The minister was a Bible Thumper, shouting that I was lost, lost, lost, and guilty, with blood stained hands for making Jesus have to die on the cross because I was so bad and kept on sinning. I was only 8 years old and frightened out of my skin. I was crying and at the end of the service asked to be baptized so that all my sins would be washed away and I would become as snow. My parents were proud of me and actually allowed it.
As I got older as realized what had happened to me, it made me angry and upset. I began studying, taking college courses, listening to lectures and reading. Now I am a Humanist and happy as a sunbeam.

My worst church experience was Boy Scouts. During summer camps, and the less likely winter jamborees, I refused to attend church services offered on Sunday's. I was punished by doing KP duty...rain, shine, or friggin' ass cold. Truth: I'd rather do manual labor than do Pope-aerobics at campgrounds.

My Step-mother, Laurie, took me to her Pentecostal Church. They told me I just needed to pray for things and if god thought I deserved them they would appear. She then told me that a married couple at the church needed a new car. They prayed really hard and when the woke up the next morning a new car was there! For them! From god!

Well I was a bit skeptical because I’d never been exposed to religion before and I was about 7. I wanted a Rainbow Brite and started praying. For three nights I awoke in the morning to nothing there. No Rainbow Brite. I got posed off and called them liars because I knew I was a good person and deserved the doll.

I’m so damn proud of myself!

My oldest daughter (I have 2) decided to get married. The guy she dated for 2 years, I did not want for a son-in-law. In those 2 years I never saw him sober and he always had a pocket with pills he freely offered. I sobbed, not cried, sobbed the whole church ceremony because I knew it would not end well. The sobbing was embarrassing, but I couldn't stop. Everyone could hear me. He had diabetes 2 and drank 2 cases a day along with the pain pills/heroin. My daughter joined him in drinking. When she called me to visit, she was in 4th stage liver failure. I did not know. She explained. I begged to call an ambulance. She was yellow. She shook her head no, smiled angelically at me. I could see a partial halo forming. I knew she had taken something and she was in and out of consciousness In a while, she said Mom I can sleep now, you go home. I got up, hugged her, kissed her, and exchanged I love yous. Then I turned and walked out of the room knowing it was my last time I would see my daughter alive. She would not leave him and if she did last longer, she would return to the drinking, drugs, and beatings.She had married till death do us part and that is what she did.

In high school I was insecure my freshman year because of dysfunction at home. My mother encouraged me to join the temple youth group-hoped it would get me into social circles. I begrudgingly went to local meetings, dances with other groups and even a trip to NYC. We also had weekends called conclavettes in other towns/states where we would have speakers-concentration camp survivors, sing Israeli songs and have a dance. It was during one of these weekends we were home and had visitors from other towns. This was a particularly cool group of kids-they liked to get high and party. I was excited and wanted my best friend Maria to come to the dance that night. She was not greeted warmly as we entered. When I was told she didn't belong there we did an about face and took off. The chaperone of the event happened to be my mother's best friend and she and the police found us at Maria's house. I refused to go back. That was the end of my temple stuff.

My worst church experience was at a funeral of a friend. He was a victim of priest abuse and lived a troubled life. He drank himself to death. He hated the catholic church yet the family took it to a funeral facility on old methodist church and made it a full blown catholic ceremony. It made me feel sick

I was raised Catholic. Although I never believed in that crap, the services were usually ok. I once went to an apostolic church. That really sucked. The preacher was aggressive, stating he could "prove" to anyone that God is real, and how helping the poor is bad for them and keeps them dependent. Somewhere within all this a few people started speaking in"tongues".....I couldn't get out of there fast enough!

My friends mother wished to save my 9 year old soul, so I went to church one Sunday to see what it was like. In front of the congregation I stood to read a passage from the bullbil. I came to the word "tribulation" & froze. I couldn't think of how to pronounce the word. The silence in the hall was suffocating & seemed to last for eons as I stood there paralyzed. Finally a member suggested the pronounciation & I was SAVED. Hallelujah! Humiliated but saved. Amen.

All of them!

Walking into a church in Cuzco, Peru, right on a central town square full of destitute men, women, and children, only to find maybe a dozen life size, solid gold statues of Jesus, Mary, and saints.

Walking into a church in Cuzco, Peru, right on a central town square full of destitute men, women, and children, only to find maybe a dozen life size, solid gold statues of Jesus, Mary, and saints.

My worst church experience came as I was going through the process of being "confirmed" in the Catholic church. Every Thursday for several months, and then for a week straight the week before, I was forced to go to catechism class. I thoroughly HATED this.

Anyway, that last week, we were practicing the ceremony. We had to be taught how to walk, where to stand, and how to answer any question "The Bishop" might ask us. During one particular rehearsal, one of my classmates was spied chewing gum. This old witch of a nun walked up to him and asked "do you have gum in your mouth?" The kid looked up and said "uh no."

What happened next is forever burned into my consciousness. In a guttural voice that I cannot ever unhear, she screamed "YOU LIIIED TO ME!!!" She yanked that young man out of his folding chair and, I kid you NOT, hurled his young body at least ten feet into several rows of folding chairs. She then rush over to the kid who was bleeding from somewhere on his face and SCREAMED "you NEVER lie to us. EVER!!!" I don't think I had ever been so shocked in my life, but I said to myself, "THIS IS NUTS!"

That incident is actually what set my feet upon the atheist path. I would return to church one more time for my mom's sake to complete the process, but I never attended church again.

I think church is perhaps good for those who like the community. That never worked for me because there was always gossip, judgment, and envy. I found my church every time I walked out side. No matter where I was, God and mother nature showed such perfect beauty in a hummingbird. or a squirrel eating a nut. Children playing, beautiful red maple trees, splendor everywhere and no chaos.

AttendIng under force, as a chIld, due to a parents mIsguIded belIefs

When I was once friends a with an older Pentecostal woman and I witnessed her staring at me in church in a rude type way. I only hung around her cause I kind of felt sorry for her. She was a woman in her 50s, was a divorcée and never had any children. Leaving church that evening with her, she told me that she didn’t feel the holy spirit come over me at all and how she thought I was chosen by the devil, due to me not ever getting the Holy Ghost during church service. She said that the devil wanted to possess me cause I was so hard to get through to. I could also remember her bragging about being White and how God’s chosen people were the White Jews and I remember feeling like crawling under a rock and dying that day I felt so humiliated and ashamed of myself.

So many dreadful experiences of church from you and in the comments! I can't even begin to match those: my worst experience of church was being bored to tears by prayers and sermons. I didn't mind some of the hymns.

In 1955 in my small Texas town, a couple named Thonig, had quintuplets. They all died and they were Catholics so they had the "Mass of the Angels", complete with lamb's wool on the tiny coffins. They had the High Mass with the candles and incense, strange smelling smoke filled the church and the little coffins etc. it was extremely scary. Oh, and in Latin, the secret language. Smoke surrounding the suffering Christ Stations of the Cross. Of course, even though you were a child you were responsible for His suffering. Senseless and not good for the kids.

When I was in the army. Stationed at Ft Bragg in NC one of my friends had started going to a baptist church and invited me to go. I have never been very religious but it also doesn't bother me so I went. The preacher quickly starting raving about jews and then catholics and what horrible people they were. So pretending I needed the rest room I got up, walked out and never went back inside.

any of them apart from looking around at them.

When the preacher told a crippled man to go sit down because the hands on praying was over with.

8 moths of working as an audio person at a Bible Church......