Monday, November 19, 2012

Church Hunting



We visited a new church this weekend.  They sang hymns from the 1700's accompanied by an organ.  And there's nothing wrong with that except the pastor then went on to say, later in his sermon, that contemporary worship music is just people trying to self-agrandize themselves and he called it putrid.  Yes, putrid.

But still, I was trying my hardest to gain something from all of this.  I'm very sure that he believes in God and Jesus as savior so how bad could it be?  My belief has always been that I can usually find something redeeming in every sermon. 

His sermon was on the story of Jesus walking on the water and Peter joining him only to start sinking.  He claimed that Peter had great faith, and boy if we just had his faith what we could do and everyone should work on their faith. He skipped right over the part where Jesus said, "You of little faith.  Why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:31)  I don't know about you, but I have always believed that the words Jesus says in the Bible are pretty dang important and maybe you shouldn't skip those parts. I mean, they even have His words in Red!  But that's just me I guess.

The totality of the message, aside from his many tangents about putrid music and other such shenanigans, was that we need to work on our faith.  If we just worked harder, we'd have more faith. (Oh and did I mention that most of the women and girls in that church wore skirts below the knee?  I felt a bit underdressed (or is it overdressed?) in my skinny jeans and brown boots.)  Anyway, this may shock you but I decided as we left that I would be totally fine if we never visited that particular church again.

So I shook the dust off my feet as we left.  What I didn't expect was what I couldn't shake off.  For the rest of the day I had this feeling of unease, of anger, of discontentment, of something missing, of doubt.  It litterally made me super grumpy. I couldn't stop going over in my head all the things I would have liked to have said to this pastor about his little sermon and his tangents.  Like:

  • Have you ever actually listened to contemporary Christian music?
  • Do you really think God condemns anyone who joyfully praises Him in song no matter what form it takes?
  • You do realize that the music you were singing was considered contemporary Christian music in the 1700's, right?  Does that mean it used to be putrid but now, since it's 300 years later, it's okay?
  • Is any music ever putrid?
  • And about your sermon, do you really think you should just skip over what Jesus has to say?
  • Don't you think Jesus thought it was important that Peter doubted?
  • Are you implying that we should never doubt and if so, how exactly should we go about doing that?
  • And if we did doubt, then are we super sinners and damned to hell?
  • How exactly, would you go about "working harder" to increase your faith?  Don't you gain faith by God proving Himself reliable, day after day?  How exactly would I work on that?
Okay, so realistically I'm not that confrontational and I very likely wouldn't have said anything to him except, "Thanks for having us."  But I was fuming about it.  Then I started moving on to depression and wondering if I was just being too hard on this guy, and trying to think of anything good I could take from it.  I decided the best part of the whole experience was that the people in the church were very nice and they obviously thought this pastor was worth listening to so maybe I just caught him on an off day.  I doubt it, though.

I couldn't shake these feelings until I prayed about it, asking God's forgiveness for being so mean spirited and praying for that pastor and that church.  And I prayed, yet again, that He would show us the right church for us.

When I woke this morning, I realized that I knew exactly where to get a good message.  I'm so very thankful that Westwood, our former church in the cities, has podcasts.  I was needing a feeling of home so I pulled up the podcast on the series I had heard my friend, Robin, talking about.  The So Pray series.  I had listened to a few of them already so I went to the next one on the list which happened to be about praying through faith.  Hmmm, a sermon about faith.  Is God trying to tell me something here?  I always thought I was pretty solid on the faith front.  It's one of my spiritual gifts, actually.  But when God puts repeating themes in front of me, I figure he has something He really wants me to know.

So I listened.  At first I was a little disappointed that it wasn't Pastor Joel preaching but that quickly faded since I loved hearing from Brian Suter as well.  He was giving a great sermon on prayer and how faith is the driver of prayer.  And then he launched into scripture with a story about....Jesus walking on the water and Peter joining him only to start sinking.   !!!!!!!   Okay, now I KNOW God is wanting my attention.

Brian went on to say that all the heroes of the bible who were considered to have the greatest faith, all doubted God in one way or another.  Sometimes in a big way.  He said that we need doubt so that God can grow our faith even in the face of doubt.  YES!!!!  This was exactly what I had been grappling with all the previous day.  Doubt can be a pathway to great faith.

After listening to this sermon the only feeling I had was one of thankfulness. I am so thankful that God is faithful.  He cares about what we hear about Him and how it affects us.  He cares where we go to church. He affirmed that my "radar" is right when it comes to what I know to be true about Him.  He brought me through doubt and increased my faith.  Thank you, Lord!

We are still in search of a church home up here.  I'm pretty sure I know what church NOT to go to.  But I'm not plagued with doubt about my ability to find a church that preaches the truth and fits our family.  The fact is, I think we may have already found it.  We've gone a few times already and it feels right.  We keep going to other churches because we keep thinking, what if we're missing the right one?   There's that doubt again.  We'll keep praying about this new church we're going to and listen for confirmation which is kinda hard because they have an interim pastor right now.  They are in the process of hiring a new pastor so we would be in the same boat as the rest of the church body in terms of getting to know someone new.  (Hmm, I wonder if Brian Suter likes the northwoods?!)  All I know for sure is that I'll pray, with faith, that God knows where to put us.  Lesson learned.