I Didn’t Get Anything Out of Church Today

I’m going to say something that might step on some toes. But I’m going to step on my own first.

For most of my life, I went to church to receive. To be fed. To grow. To encounter God in the music, to hear something meaningful in the sermon, to leave feeling filled. And when I left feeling empty? When the sermon didn’t connect, the worship felt flat, or the morning just didn’t land? My internal verdict was swift and familiar:

I didn’t get anything out of church today.

I said it for years. Maybe not always out loud. But the evaluation was always running. Was the sermon good? Was the music inspiring? Did I feel something? Did the hour justify the effort of getting out of bed, getting dressed, and driving across town?

It took me a long time — and a move to a small town where church looks very different from what I was used to — to realize something uncomfortable: that sentence is one of the most self-centered things a believer can say. And I was saying it constantly.

Why Do We Actually Go to Church?

Let’s be honest for a minute. If we polled a hundred churchgoers on their way in the door and asked them — truly, anonymously — why they were there, the list would be longer and more colorful than any of us would admit from the pulpit.

Some of us are there because the sermon genuinely feeds us. Some are there because the music meets us in a place nothing else can. Those are good reasons. Real reasons.

But some of us are there because it’s what we’ve always done. Sunday morning, 10 o’clock, same pew, same routine, same drive-through coffee on the way. It’s a habit more than a hunger.

Some are there because of guilt. If I don’t go, someone will notice. Or worse, God will notice. As if the Creator of the universe is keeping attendance.

Some are there for the forty-five minutes of childcare. Let’s be honest — a supervised kids’ program where someone else handles the energy for an hour is not nothing. That’s a real value proposition.

Some are there because their spouse made them. Some are there because the donuts in the fellowship hall are genuinely excellent. Some are there because they’d feel weird not being there. And some — God bless them — are there because they genuinely want to be in the presence of God’s people.

But here’s what nearly all of these reasons have in common: they’re about what I receive. What I get. What the experience does for me.

We’ve turned the body of Christ into a vending machine. We show up, we put in our hour, and we evaluate whether the product was worth the deposit.

The Research Confirms What We Already Know

Barna’s research on why church remains meaningful to Christians is revealing — not for what’s at the top of the list, but for what’s at the bottom.

When Christians were asked what makes church valuable, the highest-ranked responses were personal spiritual encounters: connecting to God, experiencing the Holy Spirit, growing closer to Jesus. Shared prayer, emotional support, and good sermons ranked in the middle. And at the very bottom? Financial giving and discipleship.

Read that list again. The things at the top are all about receiving. The things at the bottom are about pouring out. The church is valued most for what it gives us and valued least for what it asks of us.

And here’s the tragic companion finding: older adults are among the least inclined to mentor younger believers, even though Barna’s data shows that younger adults see enormous value in being discipled one-to-one and in small groups. The people with the most to give are the least likely to give it.

Which brings me to a conversation I had in my small town that I haven’t been able to shake.

"I Don’t Need Any Cheerleading"

A man in my town — an older believer, someone who’s walked with the Lord for decades — said that it didn’t make sense for him to attend a men’s group that discussed being a godly man. His reasoning: at his age, he didn’t need any cheerleading.

I’ve thought about that statement a lot.

He’s right that he may not need the content. He’s been studying the Bible longer than some of those younger men have been alive. He’s navigated decades of marriage, parenting, career, loss, and faith. He probably doesn’t need someone to tell him what a godly man looks like.

But that’s not why you go.

You go because there are younger men in that room who have never seen a marriage last forty years. Who are trying to figure out how to lead their families and have no model for it. Who are carrying weight they don’t know how to talk about. And they need someone who’s been where they are and come through the other side — not to lecture them, but to sit with them and say, “I’ve been there. Here’s what I learned.”

That man’s presence in the room would have been a gift. His decades of experience, his hard-won wisdom, his failures and recoveries — all of it was exactly what the room needed. But he measured the group by what it offered him. And by that measure, it came up short. So he stayed home.

And the younger men who needed him never got what they were looking for.

The Vending Machine and the Body

Here’s what I’ve come to believe, and I came to it late — later than I wish:

The question is not “What did I get out of church today?” The question is “Who was served by me being there?”

That’s a fundamentally different orientation. And it changes everything about how you experience a Sunday morning.

If I go to church to receive, then a flat sermon is a failure. A worship style I don’t prefer is a problem. (And coming from the Vineyard, a real problem.) A morning that doesn’t “feed me” is a waste. I become the critic of a product, evaluating whether the experience met my standards.

But if I go to church to give — to be present for someone else, to encourage, to notice, to serve, to bring whatever God has put in my hands — then the sermon is almost irrelevant to why I’m there. The music style doesn’t matter. The experience doesn’t need to impress me. Because I’m not the customer. I’m part of the body.

Paul described the church as a body where every part has a function (1 Corinthians 12). The eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” Every member matters. Every member contributes.

But here’s what we’ve done: we’ve turned a body into an audience. The few people on the platform contribute. Everyone else consumes. And when the consumption doesn’t satisfy, we say we didn’t get anything out of it — as if the purpose of the gathered body was to perform for us.

How a Small Town Changed My Mind

I wish I could tell you I figured this out through deep theological study. I didn’t. I figured it out by moving to a small town where the church options didn’t match my preferences.

The music isn’t my style. I’m Vineyard. The church sings hymns. The theology doesn’t always align with mine. The preaching style is different from what I’m used to. By every “what do I get out of it” measure, I should have checked out a long time ago.

But I stayed. And over time, something shifted. I stopped evaluating the Sunday morning experience and started paying attention to the people in the room. The woman who always sits alone. The couple dealing with a health crisis they haven’t told anyone about. The young family that’s new in town and doesn’t know a soul. The teenager who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else but showed up because someone dragged him.

Those people don’t need me to have a great worship experience. They need me to be present. To notice. To say hello. To follow up during the week. To remember their name.

That’s not what I get out of church. That’s what I bring to it.

Others First — Even on Sunday Morning

Philippians 2:3–4 keeps showing up in my life, and I think that’s because it applies to more situations than I initially gave it credit for:

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."

We usually apply this to big moments — sacrificial service, generosity, acts of compassion. But I think it applies just as directly to the small, weekly, unspectacular act of going to church.

Look not to your own interests. Look to the interests of others. What if that’s the real reason we show up on Sunday? Not for what we receive, but for what we bring? Not for the sermon that feeds us, but for the conversation in the parking lot that encourages someone who almost didn’t come?

What if the man who doesn’t need cheerleading went to the men’s group anyway — not for himself, but for the twenty-eight-year-old father sitting across from him who is quietly drowning? What if the woman who’s heard the Easter story a hundred times showed up not for the sermon but to sit next to the single mom who is terrified to be in a church for the first time?

What if “I didn’t get anything out of church today” was replaced with “Who did God put in front of me today that needed what I had to give?”

They Didn’t Go to Church. They Were the Church.

The first-century believers didn’t “go to church” the way we think about it. There was no building to attend, no service to evaluate, no production to critique. They gathered in homes. They shared meals. They taught each other. They pooled resources so no one went without. The gathering wasn’t something they consumed. It was something they co-created.

Acts 2:42–47 describes a community that devoted itself to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. They had everything in common. They sold possessions and gave to anyone in need. They met together daily — not weekly — with glad and sincere hearts.

Nobody in that community was asking “What did I get out of it?” They were too busy giving to notice.

That’s the church we’ve forgotten. And maybe recovering it starts not with restructuring our Sunday mornings but with restructuring why we show up in the first place.

The Question That Changed My Sundays

I still go to a church where the music isn’t my style, where the theology doesn’t always match mine, and where I sometimes leave without the sermon having landed in any meaningful way.

But I’ve stopped saying “I didn’t get anything out of it.” Not because I’m more spiritual than I used to be. I’m not. But because I’ve started asking a different question.

I used to ask: what did I receive today?

Now I try to ask: who was served by me being there?

Some Sundays the answer is clear — a conversation in the hallway, a prayer with someone who’s hurting, a connection that wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed home. Some Sundays the answer is less obvious — maybe it was just the act of being present, of being one more person who showed up, of being part of the body.

But I’ll tell you this: I’ve never once asked the second question and felt like the morning was wasted.

Others first. Even on Sunday morning. Especially on Sunday morning.

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