It started with a question, "Where do you want to go to church tomorrow?" It was a question I didn't want to ask, but after weeks (months? years?) of feeling restless in our current church home, I found myself asking it weekly as we settled into bed on Saturday nights. It wasn't as if our church family had done anything wrong, and the service was basically what we'd experienced our entire lives, but we just couldn't shake the feeling that God was pushing us to ....Something else? Someplace different? Something more? We just didn't know.
We'd discussed changing churches but weren't sure where to go, and we had no desire to hurt those we would leave behind. It was a conundrum we prayed about often, and as I lay down each Saturday night, I hoped God had revealed an answer to my husband that I had not been privy to, but each Sunday morning, we would return to our home church, or attend our childhood churches with our parents, or even occasionally conduct our own service at home with our children in leadership positions, and we continued to wonder what God had in mind for us, until recently.
As the new year made it's debut, an idea began to tickle the back of my mind. I began to think of all the beautiful, historic churches I've noticed through the years and how I've always said that someday I'd like to go to church there. I thought about the architecture and historical significance, and I wondered about the congregations within. Who are they and how do they worship? Can you feel the presence of the Lord within those walls? What kind of service is held, and would the people welcome a visiting family into their fold?
At first, I thought it would be an interesting research project that I could do during the week while my kids were in school. I could visit the churches, take pictures and study them, and maybe even end up with a nice Shutterfly book in the end, but the night before the first Sunday of the year, as I asked the same old question as I climbed into bed, my sweet husband gave his patented, oh-so-informational answer of, "I don't know. Where ever you want, " and the words began to tumble out.
"I think I want to go EVERYWHERE," I spilled excitedly, "I have this idea to research churches and I think we should go to a different church every Sunday for a year. I want to see and experience worship in all different ways and see what God has to show us through the body of Christ."
As I spoke words I hadn't even realized I was thinking, I felt a spark of excitement and fear arise, and as a plan took shape in my mind, I felt God's presence in my heart and truly felt that at long last, our weekly question had been answered, only to be asked again and again and again (but in a completely different way) as the year progresses.
So the next morning, our family said farewell for now to our home church in order to set out on an adventure, a journey into the body of Christ, and an answer to that weekly query, "Where do you want to go to church tomorrow?"
The possibilities are endless and our expectations are high. We're looking for a place to worship, a place full of believers, a place different from where we've been, or a place of comfortable familiarity. We're looking to belong to the extended body of Christ and learn more about the who, where, whys and hows of our fellow believers, and we're willing to go on a crazy sort of Steeple Chase to find it.
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