“So I church-hopped, sometimes visiting as many as three churches on a single Sunday. I manufactured good reasons never to return to any of them, but the real reason was probably that it was easier to stay anonymous and aloof than to do the hard, intimate work of actually becoming a part of a church.”
“The very anonymity that made church-hopping appealing has begun to wear me down. I am tired of looking for a church, tired of having my spiritual community be just a patched-together group of Christian friends scattered across the four corners of the earth, folks I can call at any hour but never pray with face to face or eat cheese straws with during coffee hour. I am tired of not being expected anywhere on Sunday morning.”
Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner (pg 30)
Hey, I understand exactly what you mean. (I love Lauren Winner too, by the way.) When I was in college I found my way to a medium-sized Brethren Church around my junior year. There wasn’t a single other college student that was a regular attender, but I joined the choir, and got to know all the old people, and went out to lunch with the pastor’s family basically every month. Smaller churches usually don’t have all the activities (and young adult groups) that mega-churches have, but sometimes you can find a real family there.
And, frankly, the thing that I’ve learned after moving around to Nampa and Eugene and back home is that the thing that makes a church a home is the time that you put in to serve there. Join the choir, teach Sunday School, make soup for the Lenten dinners, tidy up the grounds–and pretty soon it becomes “your” church. Otherwise, you can attend for years and never really feel plugged in.
you too, huh? it will pass. please be patient, sqeens.
I enjoy your blog so much. It is a perfect example of why you not only should be but are a writer.