I left the church in 2010, for in the UK, many churches are putting ignorant and uneducated people in leadership positions, this is why people in many churches affirm the Trinity on their websites, but then such leaders will define the trinity as either modalism or tritheism. The endless sexual scandals, the false doctrine and the imbibing of the latest nonsense of Christian TV has lead me to completely reject what calls itself Christianity today. I am honestly done with church, I see no fidelity, no love for Christ in most who call themselves Christians and endless false doctrines and scandals in so many churches local to myself. I am not attacking or disrespecting people on this forum, neither am I naming specific churches local to myself. But with local papers listing a church sex scandal every six months or so, and the national press reporting on other scandals, I see no benefit to myself by associating with such people, in fact as I dislike hypocrisy, it's in my interest to avoid religion completely.
I left the Charismatic church in 1978 because I too got disillusioned with it. Maybe for different reasons. I I disliked the gossiping and backbiting and the spiritual abuse of vulnerable people I saw in the church I attended. Because it was the largest church in town (450 people) it advertised itself as the only church that was at the cutting edge of what God was doing in the city, and that the other churches should be in unity with it. Then my wife deserted me and I found myself in a place where, because of that church's unfair stance on divorced people, I felt that I had no longer a future there. I decided to leave it and attend the local Anglican church. I found quite a different group of people, and underneath the liturgical public services, I found a group of loving people who accepted me as I was. No one grilled me about my divorce, and I was invited to be part of a leadership conference in the Wellington Cathedral.
It actually took me several years to be de-programmed from some of the views and practices of the Charismatic church that I left. I rejected all my mentors and decided that I was going to interpret the Bible for myself and live the way I wanted to instead of being directed by "disciplers" in that evil discipling/shepherding doctrine that was a large part of that Charismatic church. That doctrine has caused many good people to be seriously damaged and lives have been shipwrecked because of it.
It took me around 10 years to come to a place of forgiveness to the point where I could re-establish contact with my friends within the movement, whom I knew were sound, solid believers not affected by the other nonsense in that church.
Since 1982, I have kept away from the large churches (I will never go to one ever again), and fellowshipped with smaller suburban churches. I spent several years in a small church in Christchurch and Dunedin (New Zealand), then in 1990, I did not go to church at all when I moved to Hamilton. It was only 1996 that I moved to Auckland and joined a small suburban Presbyterian church.
I found that the small Baptist and Presbyterian churches did not have the problems that the larger Charismatic churches had. They seemed to contain good solid believers who loved the Lord and just wanted to get on with life. I am still in that church and we have around 40 members on the books with around 30 people attending Sunday morning services. No one interferes with my personal life, nor do they make exorbitant claims. When I preach (around every 4 weeks), I am a one message man. I preach about what Jesus did for us on the cross and what that means to us right now.
I have become a lover of American Mountain music and although I have been playing the guitar since I was 19, at 69 I decided to learn the banjo. I made several types of banjos, each better than the other. I played one at a country music group night and it went over very well. Then a kind man in my church gave me a banjo that had been sitting in a storeroom for years. I was blessed! So now I have a standard banjo to play, but I still play my other ones for the interest and variation. I enjoy the Mountain gospel music which goes along with my simple approach to the Christian faith.
I was invited to be part of the ministry team at a Reinhard Bonnke crusade in Auckland a couple of years ago. It was in a large church and there were 2000 people there. It took a guy 20 minutes to tell us all what a great guy Bonnke is, and Bonnke himself preached for only 20 minutes and his message was not all that exciting to me. Then people came up for prayer for healing, etc., and the band was playing so loudly that I could not hear the prayer requests and the ones being prayed for couldn't hear me. I thought it was a waste of time doing prayer ministry in a noisy environment like that. I was actually glad to get away from the place at the end of it all, and to get back to my little church where things were quieter and more sane!
My church abides strictly by the Nicene Creed and the Westminster Articles of Faith. It is strongly Trinitarian and will not support gays having leadership in the church. The only beef I have is with the Presbytery (a group of people having oversight over the Presbyterian churches of the region) interfering with our church because it is sitting on a $1.8 million dollar property with only 40 members (go figure about the possibility of covetedness of some in the Presbytery about such a small church sitting on such a valuable property). The mood of our people is that they wish they would leave us alone and let us get on with it the way we want.
So, you see, I don't lead a perfect church. It is not perfect because I am the senior elder of it and I'm not perfect. But it is good to be part of a fellowship of people and not a hermit. I went through more personal stress issues during the six years I wasn't part of a church of some sort.
So, my advice for you is to find a small church with simple, ordinary people in it, who just love the Lord, believe the Bible, and seek His will for their lives. As I was told by an Anglican curate once: "When you have been with us for three weeks, you will be as mad as the rest of us." He was right. I loved that Anglican group. They were so different from the Charismatics I had been with previously.
So there are churches that don't have the problems you describe. Find one, and just relax and enjoy the fellowship. You will be better for it. Take it from a guy who as been there, survived, and now is here.
