The Journey To Church
Posted on March 6, 2006
A while back, I was asking some theoretical questions about church shopping. The basic question was, if someone were going to e-mail the pastor of a church they intended to visit, what kinds of questions should be asked. The answer I got, overwhelmingly, was to just go, without letting anyone know you are visiting and see how the church is. Now is my time to come clean.
In case it wasn’t obvious, I was asking the question for myself. My family and I have been doing some church shopping lately, trying to find a new church home. We started out with the intention of going to a couple of churches where our kids had some friends, however a couple of other ones caught our attention too. One of those two was a complete mystery, it was a newer church in a very old church building and we wondered what was going on there. I could not find a website for the church, all I knew was their sign out front said the service times.
I understand the logic behind just going but I generally want to know more before walking in. The other unknown church, we actually knew a little about, through people that knew something, plus their website. We visited that church, the Sunday before last, “blindly”, against my unhealthy desire to want to know what I’m walking into, and it went well. It’s a church plant and they are doing some great things. It didn’t strike us immediately that this was our new home but it has potential. As far as the real unknown church, we drove by it, on that same day, just before noon and there was 1 Lincoln Continental parked right at the entrance and about 2 other cars in the parking lot, that was presumably the crowd for the 11 o’clock service. That answered our question, we decided it was not the place for our family.
The church that I always felt like would be the one is the one that we held til all others had been visited. We visited there on this past Sunday and it was as good of an experience as I anticipated. One of the motivating factors for wanting to change churches is our desire for preaching that is deeper, more of a verse by verse kind of teaching. This was definitely that kind of church. It blew me away when the preacher was just beginning his teaching and he asked if everyone had a Bible, and to raise your hand if you don’t and they will give you one. A few people raised their hands and they were quickly given a Bible to use. He went on to say you are definitely going to need it. We proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes on Romans 12:1-2. The church is in the process of working their way through Romans.
It was a good morning and our kids had some friends there, so of course they liked it. We will be back and we suspect this is where we will land. The church, by the way, is Calvary Chapel. We have CSN radio, Calvary Satellite Network, here locally, which has a variety of Calvary pastors preaching and it is awesome. (Listen online here) That has given us a good feel for what Calvary is like, plus I read one or two blogs by Calvary pastors, mainly Bob Franquiz and I love his podcasts. Every Calvary pastor I have heard, either on the radio or via podcast, preaches the same way, with the same depth.
I’m excited to learn more about Calvary and I do have questions, too. (what?!? Me…..questions??!?!) So, I look forward to getting to know some folks and having some discussions.
There might be more to add to this but this is enough for now. By the way, the sermon yesterday was fitting, I have had Romans 12:1 in the right column of this blog since day 1 and I would have v. 2 also but I was trying to save space. What a great reminder to me of the words of those verses.
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