Sunday, January 15, 2012

Church Hunting...

We moved in early November to a new side of town. It's far enough that places you want to attend on a regular basis must change. This includes church.
I have never been one who likes church hunting. It's hard, and it takes a long time. Add in the fact that we moved right before the holiday season, and that makes things even more difficult. One of my main requirements for a church is that the preacher preach from the Bible EVERY Sunday. That is hard to determine or know about a pastor when it's Christmas, if they aren't preaching from the Bible at Christmas then I am probably not in a church.
The holidays also make it hard because people vacation and people are visiting from out of town, so you don't know if the group you visited always has that dynamic or if it's a little different from someone who is in town or out of town that week.
So we have visited 3 churches in this area. The first is the closest in proximity to our apartment, we could walk if we wanted to. It's probably the most "hip" of the churches we have visited. The music is great. The preaching is good. The reason this isn't the church for us is that out of four visits two sermons were about sexual immorality. Not that I don't think this is an okay topic, and the pastor had great things to say, but one of those was on Christmas Eve?!? Also the pastor is whisked away or disappears during his prayer at the end of the sermon leaving the sanctuary for unknown places. He leaves the "Jones Road" campus pastor to finish up and actually be a pastor and not just a speaker. Also they pray the sinners prayer each week and then just ask you to go see someone in the hallway if you prayed the prayer, no actual invitation. These are all little things, but they are also odd to me.
Church number 2 is a church that I already know two families at from our homeschool group. My issues with this church are smaller. The first being they are currently without a pastor, not that a pastor makes a church, but he can make a difference in a church. The other issue is more that my husband doesn't love this church. I could probably settle here if he felt comfortable.
Church 3 we visited once last week. The church is huge, they only have one worship service on Sunday morning (if you don't count the one for those who work in childcare etc while the service is happening), but it is also the largest of the actual church buildings. This church had a million dollar surplus in their budget last year. They put it towards paying off the buildings they built recently. My husband made the comment that he could not see a younger grouping of adults in the whole church it was a sea of blue hairs. He was also overwhelmed by the size.
So this is where we stand with our church hunt. We are all tired of it, but feel no closer to a home than when we started.

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