We resigned our positions and left the only church my husband or kids had ever attended on August 13, 2008. That date is seared in my memory forever.
My son was 8 years old, and my daughter was 4. It was the only church they had ever known, and they loved it. It was a hard time.
Because our kids were so young, we looked for a church with a good children’s program. It was one of the most important things in our search.
We chose to go to bigger churches in the largest city in our area, about an hour away from home, for the first few weeks. That very first Sunday away, we attended a church we had heard about several times but had never been to. It was huge.
We walked in Sunday morning, October 12, 2008, and sat down.
The Holy Spirit was strongly upon us that morning. I could feel Him. That morning, the sermon title was “When Life Doesn’t Look Like You Thought It Would .”God had sent us to a church that we thought we had chosen at random to hear a sermon that helped solidify that He was in this. We had done what He had asked of us. We left a church that was comfortable to us to branch out and find something better for our family.
I’m just going to be completely honest with you. I loved that big church. I loved every single thing about it. I loved how they didn’t have pews, how they sang more modern worship songs, and how I could feel the Holy Spirit in the service. I loved that the preacher just spoke and didn’t scream. In my mind, this church was perfect, but it was an hour away from our house. It didn’t feel like a place we could serve effectively. It was just too far away.
We continued to visit this church while we took some time to heal, but after a couple of months, we decided we had to get serious and find a church.
I’m going to pause here to point out just how detrimental that was to our thought process and healing process. Since we were taught that to be a good Christian, you had to be in a church service a minimum of 3 times per week, we in turn thought we had to plug in and join a church quickly. We had to get busy serving. But in doing that, we rushed through the healing process. We didn’t give ourselves time to grieve what we lost; to do so at that time, in our minds, was almost forbidden. Find a church, get involved, join, serve… this was our mantra.
I will never forget the little notebook we kept in our car. We would visit a church on a Sunday morning, return to our car and rate it in several areas. We even let the kids give us their ratings. Friendliness, Children’s Ministry, Preaching, Sunday School, Music…
If you’ve read the blog up until this point, you’ve probably figured out that we live in the middle of nowhere. There are plenty of churches in the area, but we were ready to move away from the Missionary Baptist small-town church. We decided we would only visit Southern Baptist Churches or Non-Denominational churches. That may sound like we were being close-minded, but we had spent so many years in that small Missionary Baptist environment that we were ready for a change. We just couldn’t do it anymore. We were looking for open-mindedness and a more forward-thinking church. Let me tell you, those are few and far between in a rural area; in fact, they’re almost non-existent. Our search was disappointing. We left many churches feeling heavy-hearted. We would return to the big church in the city when we wanted a good church experience, and we would leave wishing it was closer to us.
At one point, we almost gave in and decided to join the big church and just drive the distance every week, but the kids didn’t love the Children’s Ministry for one, and secondly, my husband knew we would become so involved that we would live on the road.
It just wasn’t a feasible option.
One Sunday in October of 2008, we decided to visit a church in a town about 30 minutes from our house. It was a little farther than we wanted to go, in the opposite direction than we wanted to go, but it was on our list.
My father-in-law was with us this week because we were going to the air show after church. It was the first time he had visited a church with us.
By this time, my parents were also visiting churches, and they were also with us this particular week.
When we walked in, the children’s pastor immediately greeted us. The kids were excited to go to their own service. We went to the auditorium and found a seat. It was an extremely traditional church with pink carpet, stained glass, chandeliers… everything we weren’t looking for in a church. They had a choir that also wore pink robes. It was definitely not what we had in mind. The preacher was older, but he was kind. His message was good. Though it wasn’t what we preferred, the music wasn’t bad. The people were very friendly.
When we got to the car, the kids told us that they loved their service, and they couldn’t stop talking about the friends they made. If this makes any sense, the only way I can describe it is that the church was our dream church and also our greatest nightmare at the same time. It had friendly people, the children’s programs, a kind pastor, it was Southern Baptist, but it was stuck in time, it was traditional, the people wore dresses and suits… it wasn’t modern like we thought we wanted. The resounding statement from my father-in-law when we got to the car that morning is something I won’t forget… “if ya’ll don’t visit that church again, you’re crazy”.
It did have a certain feeling about it. It felt like the Holy Spirit’s prompting. Could this be the church?
Until Next Time,
Whitney