You touch on some reasons I no longer attend religious activities.
bugkiller
The problem with many is that they think that God is inseparable from the Church, and that God can be found only in a church. When God revealed Himself to me, it was right away from any church and in the middle of a golf course under a starry sky. For me, church is a means to an end. It is not the end in itself. I have written a book and preached on why we go to church and what we should do once we get there. Most of the problems that I encountered in my walk with Christ has been in churches where self appointed authorities have tried to dictate how I should live and worship. My daughter, although going right through our Sunday School and accepting Christ at the age of 10, will no longer go to church because she does not want people telling her how to live. I told her today that God is more concerned about who we are than what we do, because when we are able to sort out who we are in Christ then what we do will follow suit.
Church is not any holier or more significant than any other place. All it is is just a building where Christians meet together to fellowship, worship and sit under good ministry. Many do it quite happily in private homes. I can have great fellowship at a downtown coffee bar with some Christian friends. I can just as well worship God driving down the motorway in my car. There is no special presence of God in any church building. When the building is empty, it is just like any other empty space. When people attend church, they bring the atmosphere and presence with them because of the indwelling Holy Spirit. One doesn't have to hype up an atmosphere if the atmosphere is already there. This is the error of many charismatic churches. They think that when people arrive there has to be a hyping up "worship time" where loud music is played and the leader yells at the top of his voice through the microphone. What happens is that because the devil is always there to assist in the hyping up to distract people from the truth, He gets fully involved in it.
But when people arrive at church knowing that they are bringing the atmosphere with them and start worshiping and fellowshipping on that basis, then there is no hype, the devil knows he is defeated and cannot influence the proceedings, and the members are built up through good ministry without the "spooky spiritual" stuff.
This is why a formal, liturgical service can have more of the Holy Spirit in it than a hyped up charismatic service. When I run a service at my church there is no hyping up. We have our three hymns and a sermon, plus morning tea afterward, and we have a good time with the Lord. The time we spend on a Sunday morning builds up our faith and strength for the coming week. That is what church should be for, and not a place where there is a hyped up hallelujah hootenanny.
Don't get me wrong. I have a Pentecostal background and I enjoy whooping it up with the best of them, but it can be done decently and in order and from the heart and not because getting hyped up is the religious thing to do. This means if we want to be quiet in our worship then we can be and still worship God in truth. We can be noisy and upbeat if we want to, and still know that we are worshiping God in truth. If things are done from the heart, then it is always acceptable.
People get very excited in a football match and it would be strange if they didn't. But when people get so hyped up that they do stupid things and go over the top, then it becomes inappropriate and they need to be shut down before they do further damage. It is the same in churches, and because leaderships in some churches don't know the difference, that is why many like you don't want to continue attending church.
