Church Searching

Let me start out by saying, we have a church home. There are plenty of people there who know us and we love dearly. It is a perfectly fine church.

Now, let me explain the stirring in our hearts that is driving us to look at other churches.

Our current church is over 30 minutes away. Since we have fully recovered from having to drive over an hour to anything, we feel the 30 minutes is a little bit long. Sure, once a week is no big deal. But, if you want to fully get involved in a church, then you need to be there more than just on Sunday. By the time my husband gets home, we get dinner, an hour on the road for an hour long bible study is just too much for one night. That is the biggest problem and certainly is the number one reason we are struggling to connect with our church. It isn't anybody's fault, it is just a product of circumstance.

Now might be a good time to make a huge observation. When we left our church in 2014, we were developing new relationships in this church. We were only there for six months, but it was a great six months. There were a few families from our first church and that made it pretty cozy. When we returned in 2016, the church seemed to be full of equal parts new people, previous members and transfers from our first church.

I'm not going to lie, I still have the tiniest bit of hurt plaguing me from our very first church. We attended the church for over six years. We sat in the same place week after week. We went to nearly everything. We got involved in ministries and I led or helped lead in a few. I served in the church office for over three years. Don't get me wrong, I had plenty of times struggling with church because of my own personal stuff. But, we were there.

During that time, people weren't very nice to us. We didn't have children and really didn't have a place or people. It wasn't until we right before we left that we had established a place. In the five years prior to that, people didn't make an effort to get to know us. They barely said hello. In fact, during my time in ministry, I saw the most awful sides of people. Here's the deal though. I've forgiven all of that. However, now we see many of these people sitting in our church now. They still won't bother to say hello and I don't feel overly compelled to put myself in their path. I'm human, it stirs up painful reminders of our first church and difficult to swallow in a church where we are failing connect.

Then, we are just tired. Exhausted really. I don't need to enumerate it, but we spend over two years of church just being hard. Hard because of the unwelcoming, people and crazy situations. Hard because our hearts were just not in it, not really allowed to be in it.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't want to be in church if it's going to exhaust me emotionally. I love church and due to circumstance, the church is my family. I need to be in a place where I can be me and fit. I need to not be judged or stuffed in a corner because I don't have children. I need to be with a church who will allow me to serve people in the ways I am gifted, even if those aren't the way I would choose.

So, here we go. We know that if God doesn't lead us to anywhere else, then He's leading us back to our church. I'm going to try to keep track of our experiences each week. Not for anyone, but me. I need to be honest and try to flesh out those parts of me that are overly critical. I'm hoping God will make it very clear to us in a good time frame, but I know we will keep looking until He does.