New Church?

Our search for a new church home and community is no secret here. It's been well documented in this blog. We left our church in Boulder after almost 3 years and set out this summer to find a new one. Although we like the pastor, worship, and in general think the people of CBC are friendly enough (at least with each other), we weren't connecting. I've done a small group, playgroups, get togethers, MOPS, Bible study, Sunday classes, and church, and still leave there without chatting about anything more substantial than the weather. After 3 years of striving to connect and feel like we are part of something, it's frankly just gotten old. We're suppose to want to be with God's people, aren't we? Seriously- we're not not looking for people to share our deep, dark secrets with. We just want to connect and have community. I feel like a piece of me is missing by not having this. We've tried a few churches, and didn't get excited about them. We settled on RCC, a small, local church in the hopes that the location of not only the church, but also the attendees, would be a good thing. We like the pastor. But we're now 3 months in, and nothing. No one even bothers to talk to us. It feels like we've crashed someone else's party. If I hadn't been tried to be part of 6-week women's Bible study this summer, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know anyone's name. Honestly, for church of its size (100 to 150 people maybe?), that's unacceptable.

So, yesterday we tried a new church. Although we were going to re-evaluate our situation in the fall, something spurred us on this soon. Possibly the fact that it really looked interesting from the website, or not feeling at all connected at RCC after 3 months, or the false friendliness we encountered by someone from CBC that we see quite regularly? Is it because I'm at the three year mark in this area, and I tend to re-evaluate at three years? I tend to want to move, also, which is another post altogether. Whatever it was, it was enough to turn our hearts toward trying something new. And..........

We liked it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We found a church online last week that looked promising. We headed 10 miles south this time, instead of the same distance north, and found the whole experience to be positive. The drive isn't bad (and you have to drive, drive, drive around here). The church is housed in a set of theatres - an older movie theatre complex in a strip mall. The sanctuary is a large theatre, with the kids stuff being housed in other, smaller theatres or some of the neighboring strip mall units. It's quite amazing what they've done with it all. Our old church in California met in the theatre of a high school, with the classes being scattered amongst the classrooms and other buildings. I felt oddly at home yesterday in the middle of the chaos, theatre-style seating and distance between the classes. I liked that fact that the church was large, with at least 300 people in the service - and we went to the second service. I liked the worship - it was wonderful! So much more to our liking and not painful or hard to sing along. Brian really liked the worship leader, which is always good, and we both liked the sermon. It left me thinking, not lacking. The kids seemed to enjoy their respective classes as well. Brandon's class had a "game room", which opens 20 minutes before class starts. I hope he doesn't like his class just because it had Mario Kart for the Wii and an enormous blow-up slide! (Both are in the game room, which is only open between services)

It's hard to gauge from one attendance how the future will look. The people seemed nice, casual, and had a wide age range. Although we're just looking for a place to attend right now, I also want to find a place where we fit in and a place to serve. I think it's important for me and important to model service for my children. I suffered from some serious service burn-out before after moving here, but feel like I'm recovering well and starting to put it all behind me.

We'll try it again next week and see what we think. We've tried a boat load of places, and haven't been this interested in returning to a place for a while. Well, really since we went to CBC three years ago. So, we'll see how it goes this time around. Brandon and Caitlin both showed more interest in their classes than they have in a long time, although Caitlin really missed her teacher at CBC (I had to convince her that she would be moving to a different class anyway this year). It could be the place we've been looking for.