An Honest Review of A Terribly Unloving Church

This post concerns Calvary Chapel Westside, a nondenominational church in Spencerport, NY (a suburb of Western/Upstate NY, near Rochester and Buffalo).

In the summer of 2019, CCW resurfaced in my life during a particularly turbulent chapter of it. I had just left a toxic church (a shitshow called "Journey") full of congregates who functioned more like a cult (in the sense that they were a LOT more interested in reinforcing "groupthink", enhancing the church's ministry and upgrading their resources than they were in forming friendships with fellow congregates and welcoming nonbelievers) and a pastor who was frankly a lot more concerned with getting as many free laborers as possible to carry out his vision of "the next great church in Rochester" than he was with actually helping people out with their problems. Finding myself in need of a fresh start, I gave CCW a chance.

Pastor David Tomasso had many great insights and some powerful points in his sermons, but whenever the subject of the "word-of-faith" school of Christian thought (of which I happen to belong to) was mentioned in any of them, he bashed it with gusto and obviously remains on a mission to vilify anyone who believes this way.

The elders were always extremely supportive whenever I brought a prayer need to them, but some would get terribly indignant towards me whenever I brought up my perspective on healing and prosperity from God's Word, labeling it "false teaching" and "bad doctrine".

Finding myself in need of some good, Godly companionship, I also attended "The Well" (the college-age social group/Bible study that takes place there every Friday night) for 1 1/2 years. During the first few months, I found that at this group and was able to enjoy it...for a season. Then after a few months and in the wake of major changes taking place in the lives of those who decided to hang out with me a few times, suddenly all of those people didn't want to hang out with me anymore and would always play the "I'm too busy" card whenever I gave them an opportunity for a hangout, going forward.

After the first COVID-19 lockdown happened and not one single soul from this group who had my contact info could have been bothered to reach out to me and ask how I was holding up during this time, that was when the reality that these people didn't give a flying fuck about me began to set in. When I tried to make friends with others at this group, I eventually found out that I was surrounded by a crowd of young adults who weren't interested in deep, friendly connections so much as they were in being seen, embracing a "hipster" lifestyle/image and disappearing into multiple cliques to have pointless conversations about anything but Jesus. In other words, I realized these people think of Christianity as more of a social club than a serious way to a better life and that by entertaining these people, I was essentially "casting my pearls before swine" (see Matthew 7:6).

Not only this, but it's worth mentioning that before I ever met my present-day wife, being single was bothering me a lot. I was always told that church was the best place to find your future spouse. That did not turn out to be the case with this church AT ALL, because even though there were plenty of very attractive women who attended the Well, 99% of them seemed to almost go out of their way to physically distance themselves from the men in this group (almost as if they were operating under a herd mentality that anyone who had a penis was a potential rapist/serial killer). I acknowledge and understand that "finding a date" was not what the majority of people in this group were ultimately here for, but women in their twenties should at least be OPEN to the possibility of fucking DATING. However different we all may be as people and human beings, we are all "men and women prone to like passions" (see James 5:17), our end goals should largely be the same: Make friends with like-minded people, find love, start a family (whatever that may look like), etc. That being said, the extent to which these girls went to in order to avoid interacting with the opposite sex was disturbing to say the least and it honestly begged the question of any of these girls possibly having been molested or raped as little girls (which, for women, tends to create a false, trauma-driven view of all men going forward). The only other girls in this group who did not function this way were so cripplingly shy, awkward and withdrawn that I eventually disengaged from them, due to their making the process of getting to know them better entirely too difficult. Bearing this and the aforementioned point regarding the Well in mind, how in the hell is anyone supposed to get to know anybody in this kind of an atmosphere?

Now, let's discuss the social atmosphere on Sunday mornings: Very, VERY CLIQUEY! In other words, unless you either A) Are a young family with young children or B) have been attending this church for a span of 10+ years OR function/operate EXACTLY the same way these congregates do, you will be disregarded by virtually ALL the congregates for the simple fact that anyone new or unfamiliar makes them extremely uncomfortable and they would much rather stick with folks they have known for X number of years. Pastor Tomasso always encouraged people to get involved in an area of ministry and start serving if they were having trouble getting to know the people herein, but if the truth were known, someone attending church should not have to go to that extent just to make some new friends.

Of course, there were exceptions to this who led me to believe that they were different from the rest and really did care about me...but in the end, this turned out to be a BULLSHIT LIE. Of the SIX or SEVEN exceptions there were to this, TWO of them RSVP'd "yes" and actually showed up when I invited them to my wedding. The rest either gave no reason or gave the lamest excuses in history for their supposed "inability" to be there for me on possibly the most important day of my life.

(To whom it may concern, my wedding was only a 5 hour drive from this church. One close friend that attended the event actually went as far as to travel 3000+ miles from England BY PLANE in order to be there for me on that day. Not saying everyone should have been willing to go that far, but it definitely speaks volumes as to how phony and fake people are when they can't be bothered to drive five fucking hours for your sake, when someone else was literally willing to fly in from halfway across the world!)

With all of that said...the ones from this church I still consider myself good friends with know damn well who they are. As for everyone else from there (as Jesus said it in Matthew 7:23): "I never knew you...depart from me, you workers of iniquity."