Moving a minimum of 10 hrs from family and friends makes for a pretty difficult situation for a young family. It’s not like we were the first people in history to strike out somewhere new with little more than hopes and dreams, but that doesn’t mean it was any less of a challenge. Another challenge that Hannah and I faced was trying to find a church. We had always assumed that being in ministry would lead us to a church as staff and we would automatically have a church home. Working for a nondenominational para-church organization removed that luxury from us (odd side not, I’m generally a somewhat well-spoken individual, but for years I could not properly pronounce ‘nondenominational’, it always ended up ‘nonde-nonde-non-denational’ and made me feel real intelligent every time).
One of the first churches we visited was the home church of a family friend of Hannah’s grandparents. It was one of the oldest churches in the area, and one of the more beautiful buildings I’ve ever been privileged to enter. The most memorable part of the visit though came during the service. It was explained that they very recently purchased a very nice, very expensive new organ. Once they purchased the organ they had no one to use it to its potential, so they hired a professional organist (apparently there is such a thing, who would have thought?). The man sitting on the bench looked a little like Dom DeLuise and wore a floor length robe with tassels that dangled all around the collar that flung around wildly while he played. Don’t get me wrong, he was incredibly talented, but as much as it was a wonder to listen to him play, it was all the more amusing to watch. I guess I’m a fairly subdued personality and not given to much flamboyance so it only makes those who are that much more interesting to me. I’m not an organist, but it seems to me like you could play the instrument properly without raising each hand alternately above your head while displaying a facial expression that reminded me of what we used to call Caleb’s ‘poop face’ when he was an infant. The man moved alternately between what appeared to be great pain and blissful joy as he worked up a sweat wringing every ounce of beauty from each hymn. He finished his set, stood up, took a bow, walked off stage and plopped down in the front pew completely exhausted. It was kind of a surreal experience for me. Although the church was of the same denomination Hannah and I were familiar with, it seemed as though they had missed the last century and were still operating in the late 1800’s with the exception of the artificial lighting... and the fancy new organ.... and Dom DeLuise.
We tried out the local mega-church and were lost in the crowd for three weeks straight. It isn’t that I don’t think that those churches do work for the Kingdom, but it was just not a good fit for our family. We tried our landlords church (a different denomination) and weren’t comfortable with some of their doctrine. We tried another church and it was closed even though the sign out front said very clearly that there were services going on at the very moment. On a whim that day, we decided to drive out to a church one of the staff members at the ministry had mentioned and stumbled on what would be our future church home.
From the moment we first walked in the door we felt welcomed. The people we encountered were kind and friendly. They were familiar with the ministry we worked for and supported the ministry financially from time to time. We got to know the youth pastor and his family and absolutely loved their hearts for ministry. Hannah’s brother started playing guitar with their praise band while we helped with the youth and children’s ministries. It was a really good fit except for one key element, the pastor.
It’s long been my opinion that among staff pastors, 95% fall into one of two categories: 1. A great preacher and a horrible pastor or 2. A great pastor and a horrible preacher. There are those who fall into the rare 5% of great pastor and great preacher, or horrible pastor and horrible preacher. I’ll let you guess how I classified our preacher there. He was an older gentleman with a doctorate. He wrote a manuscript for every sermon and read it like a script each Sunday morning. He drove a pimped out Cadillac Escalade pickup with 22” rims and a $5,000 stereo system. He built a 9 hole golf course at his home, but refused to support our family at our ministry citing financial constraints. He once said from the pulpit that should a man commit adultery, his wife would be held responsible for the affair in as much as she had failed to fulfill her sexual responsibilities to please her husband in whatever way he desired. Almost weekly he told stories of how he drove men and women from his office in tears after passionately educating them on the error of their ways. More than once people would rise and leave the service during the sermon either in rage or shame as he told stories about them. I struggled weekly with a desire to set him straight on all things idiotic he chose to indulge in, but held my tongue in order to minister alongside those families who were so welcoming that first week.
6 years later and we don’t have a home church. We now have 4 or 5. We attend at least 3 different churches weekly and serve in some capacity at each. We help occasionally at several other churches when the need arises and although there are moments when we long for something resembling normal and stable and sensible, we wouldn’t change a thing. We’ve been a part of some pretty strange churches, but then again, churches are made up of people and if people are anything like me, they’re pretty strange.
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