The Church Hunt

I was hoping that this post would be about our experience at foster care orientation, but unfortunately an illness struck our household that caused us to postpone until mid-April.  Instead I will try to briefly put into words our recent experience with something else that has been on my mind...church.

We have been on the hunt for the illusive church off and on since we were married.  If we weren't planning on raising kids, we would have given up completely.  But, since church was so important to us growing up, we wanted to give our kids the opportunity to be a part of a community like that, sort of an extended family.  Finding a church that we are comfortable with has been a major bullet point on our adoption to-do list.  However, locating the perfect place for us has been like trying to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  (Woohoo for St. Patrick's Day tie-in.)

We have encountered numerous things that had us running from some churches, sometimes in the middle of service.  On occasion they even followed after us...beware of random church ladies showing up on your doorstep and inviting themselves in...we learned our lesson about filling our visitor information cards early on.  Most of the time, the experience was not so shocking, but completely predictable and equally abhorrent.  It's embarrassing to realize that we have been a part of groups like this.  This video pretty much sums it up:  

Last Fall we decided we needed to just choose someplace.  We narrowed down our options to two places.  They were very different from each other, but in the end we chose the small, quiet congregation.  We immediately felt embraced by the people.  They exist without gimmicks or advertising, but aren't exclusive either. They are a small, truly multi-generational group who share responsibility for maintaining the church.  They really care about each other and seem to care about us too.  As we learn more about beliefs and practices, I'm sure we will have plenty of disagreement, but we are learning to accept that and hope they will continue to accept us.  I don't know that we will be here forever, but this is as close to our version of perfect as we have found, so for now I will try to resist the urge to go chasing rainbows and just enjoy worshiping with and getting to know this neat group of people.