The Church Search

For the last four months Micah and I have been on a wild church search in ABQ.  Admittedly, we have not  gone to church every week since it has proved to be a daunting and exhausting task, but regardless we have been to many, many churches in ABQ.  I hesitated about writing this post as I did not want to offend anyone and I fully understand that different denominations and worship styles exist to fit a variety of people.  I will not go into detail of every church we went to, but here are some highlights:

• Micah and I are accustomed to large churches since the church our parents attend is quite big, but we tried out one church that actually had a campus!  There were different buildings and a stretch golf cart to pick you up from your car and bring you to the building.  That was just too big... 

• We decided to try a mid-sized, more established church.  At one time this church was probably thriving but we quickly realized that the church had not had any new members in years!  We were the youngest people at the service by at least 20 years, the sanctuary was mostly empty and we stuck out like a sore thumb.  On top of that, there was a male soloist that had a very different singing style than we are used to.  Luckily, Micah and I did not realize during the song that we were both trying to hold back the giggles because otherwise I'm sure we would have both lost it right then and there...

• I am a Starbucks addict, so one week we stopped for a grande chai on our way to church as it was on the other side of town.  On our way into the sanctuary I noticed the church had its own coffee shop so I was completely caught off guard when an usher stopped me on the way in and told me I could not take my chai into the sanctuary.  She said security might "tackle me" if I brought it in there.  What?!?  I was so taken aback, and pretty upset that I would have to toss my drink, that I tried to convince Micah that we should just leave.  He wanted to stay since we drove all the way there so we chugged the chai and went inside.  Needless to say, we did not feel very welcome at that church....

• We did a lot of online research before going to any of these churches so when we went to a church where people were literally dancing down the aisles and twirling flags during the worship I was pretty surprised.  About 5 minutes into the worship I turned to Micah and said, "I don't feel very comfortable here" and he responded with, "Really, why?"  I thought I must be going crazy!  I guess he appreciated the open worship style, but really, we would NEVER fit in!  That is just not us...

• We heard that Fernando Ortega was the worship leader at a local Anglican church so we decided to give that a try.  I guess we didn't realize how different Anglican is from Reformed or Presbyterian (the denominations we are accustomed to) as we were surprised to see white robes and the lengthy bulletin with directions of what to say when, and when to sit and stand.  We stayed through the sermon but we definitely snuck out early as this was not the church for us...

Luckily, we have not had bad experiences at all of the churches and we have now narrowed our search down to our top two choices.   Surprisingly, these two churches are very different from each other as one has about 80 people attending each week and the other has thousands, but we will attend both over the next few months to decide which one is better for us right now.  We are both glad that this church search is coming to an end, although we will miss getting free coffee mugs, bread and other random gifts every week :).