We decided last week to give the Valley Campus behind our house another chance. I am thankful we did.
The experience was completely different. Everyone was friendly and welcoming.
When we walked in the door, the campus pastor talked to my husband while a little older lady talked to me. I'll circle back to both of these people later as they touched my heart this week.
The music was good, like last time. The preaching was different. It was a live feed from the Blue Springs campus and the pastor there. That was fine with us as we did enjoy his preaching. We were a little put off that he had only preached 20 minutes one time, but this week was over 40 minutes. He is a solid preacher and gives some great call to action items.
As we left, someone from a previous church stopped to talk with me. It was nice to see a familiar face and she was absolutely kind.
I headed on out the door and the little older lady touched my arm. I looked at her and she said, "You have a great week sweetheart." I know, it's a small thing. But my raw, hurting heart needed that kind of gentle kindness in that moment. We were still grieving losing our little dog. We felt raw. We weren't crying or anything, but the pain was still real for us.
On Monday while he was talking to me during his drive home, Kent had another call to take. He doesn't miss too many calls since he's looking for a job. About 20 minutes later, he called me back. The campus pastor had called him. Keep in mind, we had met this man a total of three times. We met him twice about a month ago and then during our visit this past week.
He told Kent that we seemed down and he wanted to check on us. He asked if there was anything that he could be praying for us. Kent explained that we don't have children and how we had put one of our dogs down. He said the pastor handled the situation with great compassion and understanding. Then they talked about the church and had a great conversation.
Let me share some perspective. We've been gone from our home church for a few months. Except for a short email from the pastor, we've not had one person reach out to us. They have two services that are very full. Chances are, nobody has missed us. During our loss of Lucy, nobody from church bothered to reach out to us. I mean if you know us at all, you know how much we could have used some encouragement during that.
This pastor who has talked to us for maybe five minutes total and shook our hands, well, he called. He noticed a slight change in us. He went to a lot of trouble to find a phone number for us. He called at a time when Kent wouldn't be at work. He showed genuine concern for us. We aren't members. We are visitors. We have been to his campus two times and the main campus three times. We had not seen him in a month.
I was impressed. Impressed by his genuine care and concern. This is the kind of pastor we desire, the kind of church where we want to be. This was the kind of care that our very first pastor told us we should find in every church.
Right now, I don't know where we are going to end up. Literally. I don't know if Missouri is meant to be our home long term. Once we figure that out, we will probably get serious about finding a church home. The Valley Campus could be it for us.
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