Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Where oh where will our home church be? Oh where....

We have been on a hunt. A hunt for a doctrinally sound, contemporary, relevant, PEOPLE LOVING church for a couple of months now and we have visited one in particular for about 3-4 weeks (if you count the online service they had yesterday). There isn't one thing I can say I dislike about it. When we walk in people are genuinely friendly and helpful. Worship is "upbeat". Message is sound. But I don't feel a pull to stay there, per se. We had become so comfortable in our church. Great circle of friends, a position God created for us to serve, and the same vicinity of pew, in which we parked ourselves every Sunday. We loved it there. Things happened and people were revealed. I'm ok (finally) with that part, mostly. It would be so easy to go back and sit in the same spot and just slide right back in our routine. But there is just something inside of me that says "there are a lot of FAR right people in our congregation that I just do not want to be identified with!" Our church has been seen in our community as "wealthy(which I am not), judgemental, bible thumpers" And my defense was always the same: we are being "persecuted" for standing on The Foundation, if they would just come they would see it isn't like that. Boy was I wrong.
After some really rough times over the past year, I have seen that as a body, those accusations are true to a degree. Although I don't think the majority are guilty, I think the minority has spoken over us all. I just refused to see it, in my own little area of service, with like-minded, freed up brothers and sisters, those people just did not exist to me.
So now we are church searching and it is tough. We've seen big, pretty ones, little country ones and some budding ones. There are things we'd like to take from all of them and put into one functioning body. I understand there is no perfect church, because we are not perfect but we need to find a landing strip. Even if our plane lifts off a year from now to a new and exciting destination, we need a layover.
I am so distracted by my search for a body it is interfering in my search for God's heart.

1 comment:

Heather of the EO said...

Oh how I hear you! We've struggled for a long time, trying to figure out how to make a church our "home." I pray you'll find the "fit" for you.

Your last sentence is SO profoundly true...I don't even know what to say.