Church

Lately, I've been thinking of churches. Currently, I attend Christ Community, in the Old Mill Campus. I've attended for years, and I can name cases where it has influenced me in very positive ways.

However, for a little while now, I've been thinking I want to change churches. Yes, I still like my current one and support much of what it does, but it just doesn't feel like the sort of church I want to attend, anymore.

Growing up, I'd attended smaller churches with my family. As I got older, my parents searched through different churches, after coming to disagree with some of what was going on in the one they attended, as I understand it. Eventually, we started attending a larger church, Westside, and later settled at Christ Community. For years, even after I went through a sort of phase where I didn't attend church at all, I'd called it my home.

However, after I developed a sort of Ecumenist ideology and started joining some my friends for some of their services, including a Catholic traveling group called "Mass Chaos," and especially in my experiences with GAMe, I found something I hadn't known before: a sense of fellowship and community.

Yes, my current church has that, and I've met people both at there and from there. However, I never meet people from there... there, and I only see those that I met there when I attend, greeting them at the beginning of the service and saying goodbye at the end. If you want to join the community, I find the methods tend to be organized and structured, but not natural. My last effort to even become a member involved a four-week class, and you even have to sign up just to be a part of a group within the church.

When I was with GAMe, much as I dislike some of the things I saw, I loved the fellowship aspect. I literally got into a study group because my friend told me to follow her to hers. When they needed assistance for the powerpoint system, I only had to walk up and say I could help. When I attended every week, there were people I could chat with over a game of pool, and I looked forward to meeting with people that I had come to regard as friends and not just acquaintances. I just don't get that same feeling at my church, and I've come more and more to consider that aspect important.

So, today, after missing another church service when I didn't want to go to and thinking of charities that I feel my tithe money could be better provided to, I think I'm going to start looking for another church. Again, I do like my current church and am pleased about much that I've seen within it, and this is not meant to degrade or insult it in any way. However, I just feel that it is not the church for me, at least not anymore.

I think I'm going to do research and, after providing my current church with my final tithe, find myself somewhere else to call home.