On Church

I never wanted to be a church "waffler". But alas that is what I am, and have been for the last 3.5 years.

When we moved to a new community we started attending an enourmous and cool church. We were knee deep in babies and toddlers, so we never got plugged in. I actually kinda like being annonymous, but we recognized that we were being the consumate consumers. Write a check. Enjoy great worship. Listen to the sermon. Get free babysitting while the kids are in a terrific sunday school. Send em to VBS. End of involvement. That is not what God had in mind for participating in the Body of Christ. We were treating church like Wal-mart.

So when some friends of ours caught the vision for starting a home church we thought it was a good time to make the switch. Home church is cool. It is so un-flashy. It is about relationships and God's word, just as it should be. But part of the vision of a home church is to eliminate infastructure so it allows people more time to minister in their community in organic/natural ways. I love this. The problem for us is that our church is 30 minutes away and in another community entirely. Getting connected and ministering in this town is just not feasible - especially with the arrivial of babiness. So though we are marinally more involved we've essentially re-created our mega-church experience.

To complicate things; we are both part of Life Groups that sort of exisit outside of church boundaries. The friendships we've made in these groups go way back. Particularly for me - my group is the Body of Christ in action. We love each other, pray for each other, help in crisis, and sometimes even study the Word together. Also, we are involved in and give to ministries that help orphans and underprivledged kids here and worldwide. So, we are involved in "THE CHURCH" just not "A CHURCH". Does that make sense?

Anyway - since the arrival of #4 driving 30 minutes to church has become major hurdle to getting to church. That, and lame excuses. We recognize that the problem isn't the church. It's US. We need to invest, and get connected.

These are the obstacles: church is far away and in another community, we are kinda stretched thin with 4 little kids, and introversion (neither of us like meeting new people - maybe hubby more than me). Then there is my Baptist Baggage: any church that reminds me of the legalism that was part of churches I grew up in rubs me the wrong way. We visited a church with banners on the wall - nice church, nice people, dumb banners evoked bad memories. Silly.

Last Sunday we visited a little church plant near our house. Little - wins points. Close to home - more points. No dumb banners - lots of points. Edgy worship and yummy coffee + friendly people - points, points,points. Doctrinally sound - more points. So maybe Hubby and I will take the pastor and his wife out to dinner, change our 'tude and and get involved.

Kids are up - gotta run! No time for spell check - sorry