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Sunday, November 2, 2008
Searching for a church community
A tearful decision to switch churches helped us find a sense of belonging that we didn’t have at the church my family has attended for 40 years.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My family has attended the same church in Decatur for almost 40 years. My parents were married there in the 1960s. My brother and I were baptized there. I was married there and baptized all three of my children at the church. Families at that church have known me longer than my husband.
So you can understand why it was painful to decide: Should we stay at the church I’ve known my entire life or switch to a closer church that would make our family life much easier?
We struggled all last year with this decision. Although we loved the church and the people there, it is a 30-minute drive away and had a relatively new schedule that made attending Sunday school and services tough. We had to get up by 7:30 a.m. to make 9 a.m. Sunday school. The next service available was at 11:30 a.m., which was more than an hour wait after Sunday school.
Our interim solution was for my parents to take the kids to Sunday school, and then we would pick them after. We’d kill an hour eating donuts and playing on the church’s playground and then attend services. The kids would be hyped up from the sugar in the donuts so it was a tough hour and fifteen minutes to get through church. Door-to-door our whole church experience lasted about four and a half hours, which left us exhausted for the rest of the day and feeling more angry than spiritual.
Outside of Sunday services, we never attended events there. We just weren’t willing to drive 30 minutes into town on a Friday night for a Lenten fish fry or on a Saturday for a festival.
After many tearful conversations, we finally made the decision to switch.
And what we’ve discovered is that even though we don’t have a 40-year history at the new church, we have found a much greater sense of community and belonging.
These are the families with whom our children attended preschool and now attend elementary school. These are the families we see at the grocery store and at the parks. Our kids love seeing their friends in the church pews and so do we.
And because we enjoy seeing our friends and because the church is only five minutes away, we have found that we are spending a lot more time there. The kids went to Vacation Bible School during the summer, and I was able to help out teaching. We had a fantastic time at the church’s fall festival dinner and dance. The kids had pizza and played games with their friends, and we dined and visited with all the parents. We also seem to drop in at the church more often just to visit.
On top of being located closer to home, the school of religion schedule is much easier for us. The church offers religion classes on a week night, which makes choosing a weekend service very flexible.
To further reinforce our feeling that we had made the right decision to switch, we found the new church had a need we could fill. The church wanted to start a children’s liturgy of the word program. I had helped with the program at our old church for four years and was happy to set it up at the new church. It’s felt great to be useful to the new church and also has been a fantastic way to meet lots of new families.
Of course, we are sad about not attending church with my parents anymore, and I’m not sure how we’re going to handle the holiday services. We want to celebrate with my parents, but we would miss terribly our new parish family. Maybe we can convince my parents to switch as well — at least for Christmas Eve.
Have you ever switched churches? Why did you decide to leave? How much do you think proximity matters in finding community in a church? You can email Theresa with comments or ideas at ajcmomania@gmail.com
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