Searching...

Our family is in a really akward place right now... we're searching for a new church. We've belonged to the same church for about 14 years now, they were our family. But do you know what it feels like to grow with, depend on, and love your church family for such a long time, only to find out at your time of most need, they weren't what you thought?

Before we committed to our church, Marc and I even "shopped around" for a different church. But something always led us back to the First Presbyterian. It was a combination of everything: the people, the environment, the pastor... We were so involved - leading the weekly children's group, attending Sunday School, never missing a week. Then something changed. I can't quite pinpoint it - maybe we grew too fast, adding a 3rd weekly service, a bigger administration, I don't know. When Marc's mom got sick, we turned to the church for answers. Ok, maybe not answers, but comfort. We got it from various people, but not from where we felt we needed it. I never approached our pastor about it, so maybe it's not fair of me to write about it, but I'm going to anyways. I felt like he was too busy for us. The day Marc's mom died, we called the pastor to let him know she was in her final hours. He came that day - 6 1/2 hours after I called him. And when he came, he brought someone with him, who chose to stay in the car, while he left the car running, came in to say a prayer with the family, and left (literally) 2 or 3 minutes later. Marc's mom died 2 hours later. I don't kn ow... maybe that's how things work. Maybe we were expecting too much... but we felt like we needed someone there to hold our hands, to guide us through this...

So we haven't been able to bring ourselves to go back. It's been a year now and his mom's birthday was Friday. We thought we should go out to dinner or something to commemorate it. Then decided the best way to honor her was to find a new church, and get back into going regularly.

Enter: Church on Steroids. We were asked by a neighbor to attend her church. She warned us that it was a very upbeat service. Whoa! It was an awesome experience but a little unexpected. People were throwing up their arms to heaven, shouting hallelujah, passing out from the Holy Spirit. There were movie theater screens, a rock band set up, stage lights, microphones, men wearing "Security" shirts, ushers with uniforms that looked like they worked at the local theater. There's nothing wrong with any of this, but we just came from a very conservative church where you sit in pews, sing a few hymns to begin, listen to the sermon, shake your neighbor's hand, then go home.

So we're going to keep looking. We have a few we are really anxious to try. After a year, I kind of fell out of my whole relationship with Jesus, so it did feel nice to be in the house of the Lord again. Hopefully we'll find our own new house.