My Search for a Church

Choosing a new house. Buying a new car. Picking out furniture. Deciding what to watch on television. These are all, to one degree or another, stressful decisions to make. But I had no idea what shopping was like until I made the decision recently to begin the search for a new church.

About a year ago it became clear to me that I was not happy attending the church I was attending. The reasons are not important, but they were important enough to me to prompt me to stop attending. That was followed by some conflicting feelings... I was sad at first that I left some close friends and, along with them, the sense of familiarity and comfort I had grown accustomed to. I felt a deep sense of apprehension and dread because I had no idea what came next. I had been at this church for seven years, which encompassed my entire life as a person of faith.

After those feelings came a sense of excitement about what might be out there. I was ready for a new adventure and I couldn't wait to get started. So I started putting together a plan to find my new church. Step one was to read the church directory in the newspaper. I started going down the lsit and disregarding the churches that didn't apply right off the bat. I'm not Catholic, so they got crossed off. Then I deleted the B'hai, Mormon, Jehova's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and any others that didn't fit the Protestant category. Then I narrowed it further by crossing off denominations I figured I wasn't interested in. So, out were the Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans and several others. So basically I was left with the categories "Non-Denominational" , "Missionary" , "Evangelical" and "Other." I thought I had a nice short list and that it would be easy to find a church in no time. How wrong I was.

I began by trying the churches closest to home in my town. It soon became apparent to me that I was in for a long process. I found that at each and every church there was something I didn't like. At one it might be that the service was long. At another that the music was bad. At yet another it might be that the style of worship was too charismatic or not charismatic enough. Each had some elements that appealed to me, but none had the entire package I was looking for. So the search continued. I began to expand the radius of my search area. I was traveling up to 40 minutes away on Sunday mornings sometimes.

Finally, a few months ago, I found a church that clicked with me. The music was great, the pastor was a very engaging speaker and they had lots of programs and small groups in place. It looked like I had found a home. Then it became very clear that the drive was a problem. It was about 30 minutes from home and, at first I thought it would not be an issue. So I started going every Sunday. Eventually my wife and son also started attending with me. Somehow, we just never seemed to become "part" of the church. I was frustrated by it. I couldn't understand what the issue was. We liked all the parts of the church taken individually but we never connected. I started looking for ways to get involved- I joined the worship band and requested small-group information- but I still felt like a stranger there. My wife was even less comfortable than I was. She barely spoke to anyone and obviously did not feel at home there. So we just stopped going.

Dejected, I began to try to figure out what the problem was. Then it occurred to me. I was expecting the church to do more for me than it was supposed to. I was expecting the church to fulfill the role I had responsibilty to fill as well as the one it was intended to fill. we had the expectation that the church should make us happy without us doing out part. We went through the motions of going to the building at the appointed time, standing and clapping, and taking notes during the teaching, but we weren't "there" and we weren't open to what was being offered and, in my case, I wasn't spending the time in my own life reading or talking to God. What should I have expected?