A New Place to Rejoice
After almost nine years at the same church, we’ve moved to another. I plan to blog about the new church in a couple of weeks, so I thought a little backstory might put things in perspective.
Finding a place to worship has never been my favorite thing to do. I believe in worshipping with my neighbors in a place that is as close to home as possible. I also believe in making a commitment to be part of a community of believers even when we don’t agree on all matters of faith and practice. Doctrine is very important to me, but it’s more important to me that my church not insist on strict agreement on every issue. I want to be able to stick with a church even through hard times, so I like to spend some time figuring out what might constitute a “hard time” in the life of a particular church. I’m not sure that makes any sense to anyone else, but that’s how I see it.
I am reformed in theology, so I tend to prefer Presbyterian churches, but denomination is not the main consideration. Just before we move to Delaware, we attended a small town Southern Baptist church with a young pastor who understood and agreed with my approach to finding a home church. Prior to that, while living in Ocean City, NJ, we attended a PCUSA church just a few blocks from our home. The pastor leaned more to the conservative side theologically ( I think I do too ) and politically ( not my cup of tea ).
When we moved to Delaware, we started looking for a new church. One of the places we visited was Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church (PCUSA). We liked it very much and decided to visit several weeks in a row. One Sunday the pastor decided to address the issue of homosexuality from the pulpit. After that sermon, I decided I didn’t belong there. The problem I had was that the pastor didn’t really take a stand on the issue. Anyone who knows me or has read more than a few of my blog posts probably knows that I am not really sure what the Bible teaches about homosexuality. I just can’t pretend to understand an issue as complicated as human sexuality, and I certainly don’t know enough to interpret a few passages of Scripture dealing with the topic. I know many Christians think the issue is an easy one. I completely disagree. The problem I had with the sermon that day is that the pastor seemed to be as confused as I am. On the one hand, I want my pastor to admit his/her struggles. On the other, I don’t think a Sunday morning sermon is the place to do that.
So, the search was still on. We decided to attend a non-denominational church that we liked most weeks and continue our search on the other weeks (and occasionally by attending two services on one Sunday). We had attended several PCA churches along the way and a few other non-denominational ones, but we had not visited any other PCUSA churches.
At this point we had settled into our new home and there was another PCUSA church (founded in 1620), right around the corner. We had considered visiting earlier, but had decided against it because someone we knew had told us that it would be the same as Red Clay. Since it was now right around the corner, we decided to give it a shot. We loved it. The pastor was more conservative theologically ( politically too, but it was clear from his sermons that he didn’t associate that too closely with his theology ). Eventually, another pastor joined us and she brought a fresh perspective to the church. Judging by her comments and her prayers, she was clearly more liberal politically and culturally, which we loved, but she also tended to lean a little too heavily on the importance of experience in faith. We didn’t personally appreciate the “touchy feely” stuff, but we understood it might be a needed emphasis in the life of our church, and we were willing to take the bad with the good.
And we were happy there for almost nine years.
That’s when all the fun started. You may have heard that there have been changes in the PCUSA – a change to the ordination standards and a proposal for a new form of government. Well, people are pretty upset about it. Our church started having meetings a while ago and it was clear that the majority opinion was that we as a body did not agree with the changes. I was in the minority, but I was willing to continue working in agreement with the church. It’s a very long and complicated story, but the church was considering leaving the denomination over it. I am opposed to that strategy, but I was willing to be part of the community and work toward a solution.
During all of this our pastor took a position at a new church. That made things incredibly complex for us. The process of calling a new pastor is complicated. We weren’t looking forward to that, and we assumed the process would be delayed even more since the church was considering leaving the denomination.
In addition, we moved to a new home. The distance to our church was now going to be about 8 miles instead of less than two. While I normally believe in attending as close to home as possible, I would not normally have an issue with a six mile drive. We continued to attend for a few weeks after the move, but after praying about the decision for some time we decided it was time to look for a new church.
Or perhaps revisit an old one.
Red Clay was now just over two miles from our home, they have different leadership, and we have a few friends who attend, so we decided to visit.
I’ll have more to say about it in a couple of weeks, but we feel like we have found a place where we can worship honestly with people of like mind and faith. We spoke to both of the pastors about the changes to the denomination, and we feel like their opinion on it is more in line with ours.