Finding a Church to Belong to: Notes from Visit Two

Visit Two: January

Wondering if I am just feeling nostalgia or a legitimate sense that this is a good place to be.  Hard to tell through the haze of nostalgia.  Everything from the cheap carpet to the home-made banners on the walls and the terrible acoustics and iffy sound system and the worship music (which we sing for at least an hour, often repeating each verse more than once) and the words from the Lord (forthtelling prophecy, usually quoted straight from Scripture) and the freedom and space to expand and repeat or just improvise praise to God: this is something I thought I would never be a part of again. 

I had given up on it because everything changes, even the church you grew up in, and when you come back, even if it is much like it was, you are not.  I am overwhelmed by this feeling that everyone knows everyone else and is a family; it's something I have missed and decided I would never find and should stop pining after.  It's so strong that I find myself thinking it must be irrational, and I need to think things through and find things out before I allow myself to attach.  I tell myself not to love the pews carved with menorahs and the stars of David (I hear it used to be a synagogue).  I don't want to love the huge, frosted windows if these folks are going to be crazy charismatics doing non-biblical things.  I mean, how long ago did I stop looking for a church (like the one I grew up in) where they were charismatics who wouldn't do anything they didn't find in the Bible?  Why is it that so frequently I find what I have stopped looking for?

Older kid had a better time this week because a friend from his school was there, and he had to bring his Bible because they actually need to use it.  Oh, yeah.  My kind of kid church.