The Church, Part 1
For Harvey and me, the church has always been our life, an inextricable part of who we are as individuals, a couple, and a family. Since before we were married, the church has also been our calling and our livelihood, and the churches we’ve joined with have been the ones to which God was leading us to work and minister. We never really had a choice in the matter, and that was a good thing.
Here we find ourselves for the first time church hunting. Harvey’s main ministry now is his job in congress, and it’s not tied to a specific church. So we now have a choice. We get to be church visitors, “prospects.” But we believe God still has a specific calling for us to a specific church. We just have to figure out which one it is, kind of an exciting challenge.
In determining God’s will in this decision, we can’t help considering our experience working in the church. We think about the reasons we wanted people to join with our church, and and we think about the reasons we’ve heard people give for choosing churches--some of which didn’t quite seem biblically legitimate to us. We know we don’t want to choose a church based solely on the preaching or the size or the type of music or the quality of the children’s ministry or the location. We know we do feel called to a church like Calvary in Tulsa--a church close to where we live that’s Bible-focused, missional (locally and globally), small and intimate, and needing young families like us to jump in and serve. We want to be a part of a church whose goal is, as Calvary’s mission states, “to glorify God by making disciples of all nations.”
Our church hunt began the Sunday after we arrived in DC. We were eager to get started, and we’ve been pleased and blessed by most of what we’ve experienced so far.
The Church Plant
When Harvey was offered his job and we were considering the move, Harvey remembered a Southern Baptist church plant in DC he had heard about. He looked it up online and contacted the pastor to ask some questions about DC life for a family with children. The pastor was friendly and helpful--he even connected Harvey with a couple other congressional staffers to talk to. So when we arrived here, we wanted to visit his church first so we could meet him and thank him in person. The church meets on Sunday evenings, so we visited on our first Sunday in DC.
It was great. The congregation was small, maybe 100 people. We got there a little late (long drive, at least 30 minutes!), so we got the kids settled in their class and then we sneaked in the back during worship. The music was low-key, just a worship leader on guitar and maybe a keyboard and djembe--I can’t remember. The pastor spoke on the roles of wives and husbands, what submission means and what the husband’s love looks like. After the service, it was pretty amazing--like five people headed straight for us to introduce themselves and find out about our family. Super friendly. I met a director of an organization that counsels human-trafficking victims, whose husband is a sports writer for the Washington Times; a grad student studying peace and conflict resolution at the American University; and a guy who works on a congressional staff like Harvey. The pastor and his wife are from North Carolina. No one we spoke to was from the DC area. We are all transplants! The grad student carried on a conversation with Tabitha for the 20 or 30 minutes we were visiting. I was impressed with their hospitality and warmth, and I was thinking I would love for us to settle there. But it is so much of a drive, and we were hoping to find a church in our community.
The Megachurch
The following weekend was our second time to attend church as visitors, not pastor and wife. On that Saturday, we visited a large community church in Capitol Hill, one of its several campuses. It was at 5. Parking was on the street, so Harvey had to drop us off. Not as user-friendly as the vast church parking lots we’re used to in Oklahoma. It was a LifeChurch-type service. The younger two kids had child care, but the older two had to stay with us. They did pretty well, thankfully. It didn’t hurt that it was dark in there the whole time, and if they were making faces or squirming around, no one could really see them. The church meets in an old theater space. I don’t know if it’s used now for other things as well. It had grand, sweeping red drapes along the walls and old red vinyl theater seats. The only song I knew during worship was “Hosanna,” but it was beautiful. The kids were singing along with us. There was a brief time of greeting and hand-shaking, but other than that it was pretty anonymous. No lights, so you couldn’t really see the people around you. We found out afterward that their full-blown kids’ program happens Sunday mornings, so there weren’t many kids there that night. The pastor spoke on the dreams God gives us and how we should pursue them. He used Abraham in Genesis 15 as his example. It was a solid message with a lot of good insights. I’m glad we went to the service, but it wasn’t our church. We’re called to join with a congregation smaller and more intimate, one that is more in need of a family like ours to minister and serve. On to the next, or so we thought.
(Part 2 to come.)
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