The Church Search

Kate and I have almost been here nine months and we still haven’t struck gold in the search for a church. Should we even be looking for gold? That’s tough to argue. One could say it takes a while to establish a healthy connection to a church and not one out there is perfect. This is true, but over the last nine months I have developed much more appreciation for those moments in my life that I have met or heard of others looking for the right church.

It has not been easy to find a church we can call home. This is troubling. I don’t think it should be difficult, but it is. I don’t know if this search is difficult because of the qualities we are searching for in a church. Are we being too stringent? I don’t know if the search is difficult because of the selection available to us.

I do know that I have worried more than once that we (Kate and I) will not find the kind of church we are looking for. We have visited about eight at this point. Many of them have been too charismatic and Pentecostal for us. While I was at work a few Sundays ago Kate went to a church very close to us. She came back with a negative review. The pastor had reported from the pulpit that global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the liberal agenda in this country. The pastor then proceeded to heal members of the church by slamming his hand down on their foreheads. Luckily, there were some elders behind these members to catch them after the fall. We won’t be going back.

About a week ago we received a mailing from another nearby church. It looked promising. I checked their website and read their “essential beliefs” section. It was going well for a while until I ran across some rough patches. One of the rough patches was on leadership. This church, like many others, doesn’t allow women to be in leadership positions. Women can volunteer and work for the church, but when it comes to speaking and leadership roles, women are excluded. The site offered 1 Corinthians 14: 34-35 to justify this stance. We won’t be checking that place out.

The first church we went to out here was downright frightening, not to mention it was so huge that I think we could go there for a whole year and not be recognized once. This is the same for the church we went to on Sunday. There seemed to be 5,000 people in attendance. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest church in Wisconsin and, on average, 6,000 people attend services there every weekend. The senior pastor is an English Major. Hmm.

I don’t have a solution. I just wrote this to express a little bit of my frustration and sympathy for others in the same boat.