Church shopping !

Last year we decided it was time to go to church. I missed a ton and I finally convinced Scotty to go. Well we got reccomendation from a couple of our friends and decided to go to this non denomination church that was very small and very low key. We could wear jeans and flip flops and no one cared. Half the people wore the same thing. The nursery was awesome and the service was wonderful. The pastor was very sweet and he didnt preach from beginning to end. He actually talked to us about all kinds of things. From marriage, to saving money and etc. It was such a wonderful/ fun service that he had us laughing through parts of it and at the same time sharing a beautiful message. Scotty fell in love with it. It was the first church he didnt falls asleep. He was very excited to go every sunday morning. Ours lives also started improving a lot.
Well we PCSd to Bragg in Oct. We havent even looked for a church yet because of everything that was going on. Things started to happen, one on top of the other and we started making stupid decisions and I felt something was missing. Finally I decided back to church we are going. I just feel so much better going to church with my family on sunday. Me that use to hate going to church and any type of organized religion is now craving for it and feeling like something is missing.

So after the decision was made, it was time to find the right church for us. Doing what any normal person would do, I posted an ad on craigslist (no joke and dont laugh.) but what was I supossed to do? I am in a new area and if I go to yellow pages I get over 500 hits of churchs in the area. I couldnt go to every single one of them. So I posted an ad on craiglist saying that we moved from texas, and that we were looking for a church that you could jeans and a tshirt and not be looked down on. Also one that had a nursery for Tyler and a good service. Not a preaching one from beginning to end or else Scotty was going to fall asleep and never want to go back. I explained all of that in my ad.
I was pleasantly surprised when I got over 50 responses. The kindness and willingness of people willing to help me brought tears to my eyes.
Some people wrote telling me that their church doesnt fit what we were looking for but they wished me the best of luck in finding the right one.
Other people wrote me just to tell me how much they understand how hard is to move around every couple years with the military and how difficult it must be leaving your church that you like and enjoy and having to find a new one.
I was seriouslly crying reading all these emails. This made me realize there is some kind people out there. And who would have thought I would find them by posting an ad on craigslist looking for a church?? Still makes me laugh just thinking about it.

But anyways, after sorting through all the emails, I wrote down all the names of the churches that fit our charecteristics and others that I think we would like and on Sunday we picked the first one and went.

Now this one caught my attention because on the email the guy told me you could wear whatever you wanted, the nursery is great and that his kids come home talking about Jesus and sharing everything they learned (that was a major plus considering I feel my number one job as a mother is to teach my kids about our beloved wonderful savior) and he also said the services are very livelly and that there is no way my husband would fall asleep. I didnt really like that the service started at 8am or 11 am. The 8 am is too early. No way we would make it on time with 2 kids to get ready for in the morning. The 11am seemed kind of late since by the time its done it would be well past lunch time for Tyler and maybe even past his nap time. But I decided not to let that bother me and went anyways.

Well we go in and everyone is extremelly nice. Its a nondenom. christian church. The church is very pretty and there is over 150 people there. Bigger than what we wanted but okay. One thing that we did notice as soon as we walked in the door is that church is 99.9% black. And I say 99.9% because Scotty and I were there. If we werent it would have been 100%. I mean seriouslly no joke. We were the only white people there. No exageration either. We stood up to introduce ourselves and I looked around and we were the whitest.
Now I am not racist by anymeans. I wouldnt have cared but we did feel out of place. If it was half black or even 75% I would have had no issues with it. But the fact that we were the only whities there, did make us feel out of place.
The service was amazing though. The music was beautiful, the energy was great. All the old ladies dancing in the pew while praising Jesus. The pastor was funny. He had on this bright red stripped suit. He looked more like a rapper. The way he delivered the service was funny. He would say stuff like "can I get an amen..whoop whoop" or soemthing like "I better not talk about this topic or folks are going to get mad at me..but I am going to talk about anyways. I want to rustle feathers.." ...i mean we were cracking up.
Also lots of "praise the Lord.Halleluah". It trully reminded me of any movies you see on tv about small towns southern baptist churches.
We had a good time. Even though we realized this church is not for us and next week we are going to a different one in search of trying to find that homey feeling, we still enjoyed ourselves.

So next week we are going to pick a new one from the list I made and try it out. We are between this one called Rockfish (which I heard from 3 emails that is a great church) or this other one to which we have nicknamed the biker church. Scotty is dying to go there. The reason for the nickname is : on the email the lady explained to me that we could wear our jeans and no one would look at us funny since the biker club go that church and they wear tank tops and tats all over the place and no one gives them weird looks at all. So of course Scotty wants to go to see the bikers. Not the right reason to go to church, but hey as long as he is there, its all cool.

So I will continue to post about my quest in order to find a church.

One thing that stuck with me about this church we went on sunday is that the pastor said church going is only like housekeeping. You only go to church to brush up and concentrate on God but that the real work ( or deep cleaning) is done outside church during our week and outside in the real world. That struck a note with me.
So the next time someone asks me why I find it necessary to go to church, I will tell them I need to do some housekeeping :)


Wish me luck people. We need/want this :)

love
A