Thoughts That Are Keeping Me Awake Tonight

Here we go again. I SO didn't want to have to do this, and we hoped and PRAYED that we wouldn't have to do this, but we are, once again, like the children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness without a church to call "home".

This is SO weird for us!! We are NOT "church hoppers". My family has faithfully attended church since before I was born, and there has been only 1 time, when I was about 8 years old, that we left a church because of a "falling out" with someone. The other times we have changed churches have been due to a move or something of that nature. My children knew only one church their entire lives until my father retired from pastoring and that church closed its doors.

As you know if you read my blog, we searched long and hard for a "home church" after that. We thougtht we'd found one. Then, we thought perhaps the Lord was leading us elsewhere, but at the last minute, the Lord made it clear to us that His will was for us to stay where we were. Now, He has made it just as clear that it's time to go.

I won't go into all the details as to why we've left our church. You can read a bit more about the reasons in my post titled "It's Been A While".

So, here we are, searching again, and if I may be blunt, I hate it.

My earliest memories of church are of a VERY large, VERY legalistic church. This church believed and taught that ANY woman who wore pants ANYWHERE, let alone IN CHURCH, could not possibly be saved. They also taught that going to movies, going to any restaraunt that served alcohol, or shopping at any store that sold alcohol was a hideous sin.

These folks are in bondage. They don't realize the liberty that we have in Christ. I don't want to go back to a church like that, and I don't want to raise my kids in a church like that.

BUT.....

What we are finding in a lot of churches now is that the pendulum has swung TOO far in the other direction. Everyone wears whatever they want to wear to church, wich for most people means that they dress for church exactly the same way they would dress for a ball game. There seems to be an ultra casual, anything goes type of atmosphere in a lot of churches today.
I don't want to raise my kids in a church like that either.

I know that God doesn't care what we wear. That's not what I"m talking about here. What I am feeling so sad about right now is the almost complete lack of reverence for God that I see in a lot of churches now. Many kids today, and adults for that matter, see church as just one more thing to fill in a day on their social calendar. It's not "special". We don't have to wear our best clothes, and we don't have to be on our best behaviour. That is just sad.

I think we should wear our best to church. Now, our best may be a nice pair of blue jeans, or a pants suit. I'm not saying it has to be a dress. I"m just saying that I don't want my kids wearing the same clothes for church that they would wear to go to the park.

I mean really. If I got an invitation to the White House to visit the President, I wouldn't just drop whatever I was doing and run over there in my torn jeans, stained t shirt, and hair pulled back in a ponytail. I would shower, fix my hair as best I could, put on a little makeup, and put on something nice. It might not be a dress, it might be pants, but it would be the nicest thing I had in my closet.

I would also behave myself carefully at the White House. I would want to be sure that I showed the President the proper respect, while still showing my joy and pleasure in being there.

Isn't that how church should be? Shouldn't it be someplace "special" to go? Shouldn't we dress in our best? And shouldn't we express to our Heavenly Father our praise, and our thanks, and our joy at being welcomed into His house, while still teaching our children that a church should nto be treated like a playground?

I"ve seen both ends of the spectrum, and I don't like either of them. I've been in churches that were so stiff and solemn that anyone even daring to say "Amen" was stared at. I've left a church service feeling like I"d been to a funeral.

Then, I've been to church services in wich the pastor's sermon was taken entirely from the latest book of christian pop psychology instead of the Bible, and the whole thing felt much more like a contemporary concert than a worship service.

What we're looking for is a happy medium. I have begun to wonder if it even exists.
Vicki