Church

It's been a while since I went to church...a few years. I have always loved church but something happened at my last church that really had nothing to do with me directly but it so went against what I believe that I never went back. I've never lost my faith in what is real, that is God and his plan for me, the sacrifice of his son, where I'm going when this life is done. But the people in that building were more cruel than I'd ever seen and they thought they were right and I could never reconcile that.

That being said, I have for the past little while known that I need something in my life, a place of worship and fellowship. So today my journey began.

I was raised in a Southern Baptist church and find that in some ways their beliefs and biblical interpretations don't seem consistent with the Christ I know. They don't believe a woman can become an ordained minister and I've even been churches where a woman could not teach a Sunday School class that had a man in it. It's funny, their Christmas foreign mission offering is for Lottie Moon, a missionary who served in China. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about her:

Throughout her missionary career, Moon faced plague, famine, revolution, and war. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894), the Boxer Rebellion (1900) and the Chinese Nationalist uprising (which overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911) all profoundly affected mission work. Famine and disease took their toll, as well. When Moon returned from her second furlough in 1904, she was deeply struck by the suffering of the people who were literally starving to death all around her. She pleaded for more money and more resources, but the mission board was heavily in debt and could send nothing. Mission salaries were voluntarily cut. Unknown to her fellow missionaries, Moon shared her personal finances and food with anyone in need around her, severely affecting both her physical and mental health. In 1912, she only weighed 50 pounds. Alarmed, fellow missionaries arranged for her to be sent back home to the United States with a missionary companion. However, Moon died en route, at the age of 72, on December 24, 1912, in the harbor of Kobe, Japan Her body was cremated and the remains returned to her family in Crewe, Virginia, for burial.

And our church thinks she could not possibly be a minister. But that is another debate for another day.

Today I went to a Methodist church, near my house, that had service times on their website. I don't really own dresses anymore and my feet and shoes with heels are not really happening so for the first time in my life, I went to a morning worship service in pants...a nice shirt and slacks. I was overdressed. I found a church excited about worship with a pastor with a great message about Lent. He was wearing a t-shirt with the Church's name and was forced at the end of the service to cover a bet of some kind by eating a sundae with chocolate ice cream, anchovies, squirty cheese, yogurt and onions. When last seen, he was running out the back to presumably barf. There was no choir but a band, no hymnals but a slide show, no traditional hymns and Bibles provided by the church so you did not have to know where to look, they just directed you to the page number if you wanted to follow along. I'm stating facts here, not judging. But I think you can probably tell that I found many of these things different. Not bad, just not what I'm used to. It was a nice church, they seem genuine in their faith and everyone was very friendly but it's not my cup of tea. I need to find a middle ground between my old traditional church full of intolerance and the new wave what tradition? church.

I plan to keep looking and will find what I need. God will lead me where he needs me to be. I have no doubts.