Well, we have decided to actually stay and make it our church home.
We've been very conflicted about the whole thing, but have finally decided to try the "grow where you're planted" approach.
As many flaws as this current church has, it has genuine people and opportunities for us to take an active role and contribute to the church. In that spirit, tonight I decided to step out of the lurker status, which I have tightly clutched during the past year, and fling myself into actual non-Sunday-morning contact with people. I worked up the nerve to join the worship team for rehearsal, in the hopes that I would be able to integrate more fully into the church's ministry and do more than passively sit in a pew.
For many years in the church that we left when things started getting bizarre and dicey, I participated in worship. It was my main contribution at the time because our children were still so young. It was something I could do without committing too much of my very consumed time. When we moved on to Megamart Church, I tried to join the choir and was non-plussed by the whole experience. It was so large, impersonal, and machine-like in the way it was run that I just faded out of it and decided it wasn't going to help me feel as if I were a part of the church.
So, here I am again, trying to step out into community and find a place where I can use some of my skills to help support or minister in some small way. It's been a long time, and it feels really good to be trying again. I have spent far too long on the sidelines licking my wounds over the last couple years. I finally feel ready to move forward.
I think that's why we have decided to stay at this church with its little idio-syncrasies. We're finally ready to attempt community, real community, again.
Much of our faith can only be worked out in relation to other people. Grace. Love. Service. Those are hard things to develop on your own.
3 comments:
terri, here is a link to the Joel Osteen interview that sealed the deal for me...
http://www.hissheep.org/messages/larry_king_and_joel_osteen_interview.html
if you can find video of it, all the better. I left this here for you because I didn't know if you would see it back on the other blog...
Daniel
My son Ben works for a UMC church outside Houston, after going to Asbury. I would say he has mixed feelings about that particular denomination at this point.
Your observation about community is well worth remembering in hard times, however. Evangelicals tend to get worked up about preaching and music styles, which are the superficials of worship. Growth takes place in community for exactly the reasons you note.
Yes...there are good things and bad things. I most certainly wouldn't have seen myself in a UMC church when I started this journey many years ago, though DH was raised in one.
The ones we have visited have actually not been as "liberal" as I used to think they were. I've been surprised by that....though I shouldn't have because I had no real -life experiences to compare them to....just things I read about in magazines and news articles.
*shakes her head*
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