The Search

So now here we are, looking for a new church home for the first time in four decades. Ben and I each have lists of what we’re looking for; our lists aren’t anywhere close to the same. This is my list: ·         Neither tiny nor ‘mega’ in attendance. 100 – 200 people seems ideal ·         A quiet, contemplative worship service ·         No “performances” on stage, either by singers or speakers who call attention to themselves. I don’t mind contemporary music (I prefer a blend of old and new), but I do mind showiness. The people on stage are not there to be the center of attention, and I don’t go to church to be entertained. If all the song leader does is establish pitch and help the congregation know when to come in, that’s dandy. As a musical person, I also really like to have notes to look at.  ·         A good mix of ages and genera...

The little Free Methodist church in our hometown was a great place for us when our girls were little. Attendance there was under 100 even in its best years, but there were enough people so that our daughters got a good Christian education through Sunday School and mid-week programs. We enjoyed being in a small choir, having a group of close friends who were also raising children at that time, and assuming leadership positions that we never would have held in larger churches (I’ll come back to that in a few paragraphs). We went through several pastors, but the last one stayed for eighteen years, and he became important to us both as a friend and as a counselor during difficult times.             During our time as Free Methodists, my own faith underwent considerable transformation. The change was gradual at first, reflecting changes in the culture at large. In just about every cultural movement or social issue, I found myself ten...

Little Baptist me Ben and I married in 1975, when he was 23 and I was just a few days past my 20 th birthday. We’d both been raised Baptist—not the super-conservative independent Baptists, nor even the very conservative Southern Baptists, but American Baptist, the most mainline protestant Baptist (but still pretty conservative, for all that). Only two generations before us, Baptists weren’t allowed to play with cards or dice, to go to movies, to dance, to drink alcohol. That was gradually loosening up by the time we married, but both of us would still have considered ourselves conservative, evangelical Christians at that time.             I’ll say right off, though, that even as a very young woman, I had a bit of a rebellious streak, and I wasn’t as Baptist as my upbringing. In college, I became involved with a church that was part of the hippie-ish charismatic movement that was blooming in the 70s. The church was different...