Church Hopping

Nov 8, 2011 by Lauren

One aspect of my life that I haven’t discussed much on this blog is my hunt for a new church.  The reason I haven’t said much about it is that we only recently started looking for a new place.  It seems like there was always something that got in the way.  Buuuuuuut, now that harvest is over, Graham is a little older and his habits are more predictable, we decided to start on our journey.

 

Adam and I both grew up Christian, just different denominations, so basically we just need to find a place that is some variety of Protestant.  One of the issues we’ve had with looking for places to even test out is the vast difference(s) between churches in a larger city and churches in rural areas.  Of course the local churches are going to be smaller and likely a little more old-fashioned.  They are also likely to be the types of places where everyone REALLY knows your business.  So we were scared…but this is something we both feel strongly about, and therefore started out with a Lutheran church in the area.

 

It was basically a wake-up call to how good we had it back in the burbs.  It was Reformation Sunday which, all good Lutherans know, is probably the WORST Sunday to ever visit a new church.  Reformation Sunday is majorly old school, the service is never a “normal” service.  For this reason, we almost didn’t go, but I knew if we didn’t just jump in with both feet, we never would.  When we arrived, everyone was super nice, very welcoming, they made us feel like we were really wanted.  Always a good feeling.

 

This church is a church in transition, which is a great thing to witness and become a part of, but it’s not something either of us is used to.  I didn’t know what to think.  One side had the wall board with hymnal song numbers and the other side had a drop down screen for all the multimedia used during the sermon and for the song lyrics.  We sat on the multimedia side. 🙂  I really did not realize how comical this situation was until I was explaining it to my burb-living parents.  I happened to mention that there was a woman sitting in front of us who was missing an eye.  They thought I meant some redneck hillbilly who didn’t take care of themself until I explained that she was a very sweet kind woman who explained a lot of things about the church and how it works to us, when she didn’t have to even say hi.

 

Then I went on to explain that there is no “music minister” as they are called in larger churches (basically the person who plays the piano/organ and chooses/directs all the music for the services) and they are clearly just getting started with a praise band.  The praise band consists of a drummer, a guitarist who also has a harmonica, a few singers, a trumpet and a trombone.  Errr…WHAT?  I’m pretty sure anyone with ears knows that horns and guitars/drums do not go together.  Plus, the drummer doesn’t know how to play the kick drum.

 

Oh, and did I mention, the regular pastor wasn’t there that day.

 

My parents are like, let me get this straight.  Your main issue with your former large burb church is that the music minister is out of control and only wants to hear himself sing and play his own songs…and you end up at a church that has no music minister, no organized praise band, on Reformation Sunday, day of funeral dirge music?  You don’t like the new pastor at your old church and you attend a church where the regular pastor is MIA that day?  You haven’t voluntarily gone to church in years and the one Sunday you go is the worst Sunday of the church year? You don’t like that all your friends moved away from your old church so you go to a church where you barely know anyone and the first person you meet is missing an eye?  Way to see both ends of the spectrum there.

 

Apparently, other members of the congregation were pretty worried that we wouldn’t be back, because some friends who are members, the stand-in pastor, the Director of Christian Education and the woman in front of us ALL mentioned that we need to come back on another day when things were more “normal.”

 

So we’ll check it out again, but why am I not surprised that this is how church searches go in BFE?