You must have been very fortunate or extremely selective.
My wife’s best friend when we lived in Indiana was the daughter of an acapella-only CoC preacher, so we got to experience not only her church, but several others around the area and I got to see her father preach as well.
Her church had the conservative service early morning and the liberal service late morning and I got to see both to compare and contrast.
The conservative preachers tended to strut about on the stage, prancing, dancing, lecturing, hectoring and shouting at the people for an eternity, punctuated by occasionally letting somebody sing.
The liberal services had keyboards, guitars, drums and kumbaya lyrics where everything was kind and gentle and the only thing incongruent was the grape juice. Women and teenagers got up and spoke and it was sickeningly sweet and inane.
The thing that struck me most about the services, though, was the paucity of Bible verses, the lack of prayers and the attitudes of the congregation. The conservatives were afraid of the preacher, and the liberals just had a pleasant and meaningless time of it all.
About the only thing that both the conservatives and the liberals had in common was a pathological fear of Papism, which they seemed to think stalked the land in the night and came into one’s house under the door or through the windows.
Nothing about that sounds conservative. It sounds like you got one of the FAR, FAR left churches calling itself a church of Christ.
I’ve never found such a church of Christ. I can’t say that I’ve attended all of them, everywhere. However, I find your analysis incongruous with my continuing experience. Above the rest, your statement that there is a “paucity of Bible verses” simply doesn’t wash. The Bible is studied more in churches of Christ than any place I’ve ever attended.
Another poster told you that none of what you described sounded like conservative churches of Christ, even though that one claimed to have 2 services one each for conservatives and liberals. I concur with what he said.
There is no way that THAT represented anything but a church CALLING itself the church of Christ, and there was nothing “conservative” about the so-called conservative service either, oh, well, except perhaps when you compared it to their liberal version...maybe. But not conservative in the sense of true churches of Christ who actually are conservative.
No TRUE church of Christ would divide the congregation up that way and offer something to appease different tastes. A true church of Christ would have elders and ministers who would do what they believed the Bible taught was right, and if some members didn’t care for it they would be told to feel free to go elsewhere. For you see, such a practice in a congregation is NOT BIBLICAL.
But you were looking through “judging” eyes to prove that your church was better. You were not seeking truth.
Does your church teach the Bible or does it teach the man-made creeds?
Does your church allow an option to buy forgiveness for sins? What is that based on?
Does your church install a man that you bow down to above you? We do not find anywhere that we are to establish a man above us as intermediary between us and God. That intermediary is Jesus for us - we need no other man.