Church (S)hopping

As was the case with many aspects of moving, trying to find a new church home was a new experience for both of us. I am a Preacher’s Kid (PK), meaning when I was growing up there was someone in our family handling the decision of where to attend church. Since I attended college in the same city as my home church, I continued attending there fairly regularly through my college years. And while my wife isn’t a PK, her family also had a consistent church home in each place where they lived.

After getting married, my wife and I began attending my home church, where my dad was still pastoring. Remind me to tell you sometime about the dynamics, both good and bad, of attending and participating in a church where your dad is the pastor. A blog post for another day …

While I always knew it was true, I am now more sensitive to the many legitimate reasons to visit and experience multiple churches in search of a church home. Having moved into a new state with no familiar churches or denominations, we found ourselves in such a situation.

As way of disclaimer, I realize our search for a church is a completely different experience than someone who is not yet a Christian, or who has never been part of a church. I can only relay this experience from our perspective. However, in writing up our thoughts, I’ve found myself wondering at each point how someone who hasn’t grown up in the church would perceive or experience this process. I’m assuming in most cases they wouldn’t even get to the point of seeking out a church without first having some interaction and/or invitation from some part of the church. If and when a person in that situation does visit a worship service, are they wanting or expecting different treatment than what we, as Christians, were desiring? And that challenge is only one of many facing the church today in an effort to be relevant and effective in sharing the Good News with a society in need.

Herein lies what we experienced in finding a new church home.

Denominational Deliberation

We have always been members of Reformed denominations (CRC and RCA). While it would be fun to embark on the history of the relationship between those two denominations, I’ll spare you the details for now. Suffice it to say it’s about as fun as playing Dutch Bingo. (And yes, the RCA was in the right.)

Unfortunately there are no churches from either of those denominations within reasonable driving distance of where we now live (even by D.C. driving standards). This meant only one thing: there was no easy path in finding a new church.

So we decided we’d prefer a denominational church, but the denominations represented in our area were all unfamiliar. Including the aforementioned independent and pseudo-affiliated churches, we eventually attended churches representing the Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian denominations. Needless to say we had some research to do regarding the beliefs and traditions of each of those churches and denominations.

Learning about these churches actually helped us learn more about ourselves and our own beliefs. You can’t evaluate a church, its denomination, and their beliefs without evaluating and affirming your own beliefs. And it’s one thing to do it from the comfort of home while evaluating the beliefs espoused on websites; it’s quite another to be participating in a worship service and needing to quickly read ahead with responsive readings or prayers to know if you’re actually comfortable reciting along. (To all my Calvinist friends out there, we’ve learned that some churches recite more than the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds.)

Of Course I Have a List

So what exactly did we want to find in a church? Anyone that knows me knows a list was quickly compiled. We wanted a church that was theologically sound, had good preaching, was in a convenient location from our house, had programs for young kids and couples our age, was working to reach the hurt and lost, had a solid nursery, and engaging and Spirit-filled worship. Shouldn’t be too hard to find …

The Visits

Visits: The Online Visit

It’s disheartening in this day and age that some churches still do not realize the importance of their presence on the web. We visited every church online before ever stepping foot inside their building, and for a number of churches the online visit was the only one we made. In some cases that speaks well of their online presence, as they clearly indicated what to expect, and we knew it would not be a good fit for us. In other cases we knew we didn’t want to visit, either if there was no web site or what was there frightened us away. I know we’re not alone in evaluating churches initially by their presence online.

I’ll also say what a comfort it is to have consistency between a church’s online representation and the in-person reality. Accuracy in describing worship styles and expectations for dress is obviously beneficial, but simply having consistent marketing of the look and feel of the website with signage and material at the church is a comforting feeling when arriving for the first visit, knowing I’ve got the right place.

Visits: The Consecutive Approach

Before moving to VA, an interim pastor of ours gave us a piece of advice about visiting churches. He recommended visiting a church for 3 or 4 consecutive weeks, arriving at different times, and sitting in different locations. This helps ensure you meet a mix of people, experience multiple worship services from varying perspectives. Otherwise you could easily be greeted by the only friendly greeter in the church (or perhaps the only grumpy one), sit by the only nice family in the church (or the only rude one), hear the pastor’s only good sermon (or only his worst one). By attending on consecutive weeks, odds are you’ll get a more accurate assessment in each of these areas.

Visits: The Gifts

Many of the churches we visited provided us with gifts. The gifts included jars of jelly, a coffee mug, and a candle. Nice touches making visitors feel welcome. In smaller churches we were easily identified as visitors, so someone made an effort to present us with the gift. In larger churches, there seemed to be a visitor’s center. We never checked out any of the visitor centers, but I’m guessing some of them provided gifts. Clearly the smaller churches have an advantage in identifying visitors, in this regard.

Visits: The Personal Friendliness

Another area where smaller churches can have an advantage is in friendliness. When your church is small enough to recognize visitors, friendliness is imperative. Almost all churches we visited greeted us and were friendly, but only the small to medium sized churches actually made an effort to learn our names, find out why we were visiting, and offering to help in any way they could. The larger churches weren’t rude, but there was generally nothing more than superficial greetings.

I’m sympathetic to the challenges faced by larger churches in this area of friendliness. One church we visited numerous times has 5 weekend services. Needless to say identifying visitors is near impossible. Even so, people that knew we were visitors for various reasons made no effort to introduce us to others, get us integrated, or help us find our way.

A larger church does does afford a level of comfort on an initial visit that’s hard to match with a smaller church. The larger sized churches allowed us to easily blend in without feeling like we were on the spot. Oddly enough, that same size that provided comfort on initial approach left us feeling unnoticed and somewhat empty upon departure. What is I’m sure a draw for these larger churches also ends up being a deterrent for people wanting a church family and not simply a place to attend worship.

Visits: The Follow Up

Most churches followed up with us in some fashion. (We did our best to provide our contact information whenever requested, to see how each church would respond.) A couple churches subscribed us to their email newsletters, while some churches sent generalized snail mail. One larger church sent a welcome packet of sorts, signed by the pastor. A couple churches called as general follow up. One pastor sent us a hand written note, one pastor called and later visited our house for a chat, and one pastor and his wife even had our family over for dinner.

Lessons Learned

I offer you a few of the lessons we learned.

1. First impressions are important. For us, that started with the website, and carried over to the first visit for churches we attended. Visitor recognition and treatment, fair or not, ended up being an important factor for us.
   We lovingly refer to one of the churches we visited as the Peanut Butter Church.
2. Welcoming visitors doesn’t stop once they’re seated. A woman who initially greeted us at one church was kind enough to explain a few things to us during the worship service (e.g., the process they used for serving Communion). A couple years after that visit I still remember her help and the impact it made on us.
3. Names are important. Introduce yourself, and express some interest in people you know are visiting. Simply asking their name will leave a lasting impression, much more so than a typical greeting.
4. For families at our stage of parenting, the nursery is almost as important as the worship. One church we visited didn’t have a nursery, and all their friendliness and follow up couldn’t help overcome the lack of nursery. Parents need to feel safe leaving their children with complete strangers, so anything that can be done to ease the process will not go unnoticed.
5. Worship style is important, but nothing trumps actual substance.
6. Visiting numerous churches in our neighborhood provided a sense of community. As we drove around town, or met new people, it provided a great frame of reference to see the churches actively involved in the community.
7. Church announcements can go a long way in hindering true worship. We lovingly refer to one of the churches we visited as the Peanut Butter Church. Every Sunday, the worship service started with an intense time of singing and praise. As that portion of the service completed, they immediately launched into mundane announcements regarding their life as a church, squashing any hope of maintaining a worshipful focus on God. One such announcement included a nurse from the congregation who took it upon herself to inform everyone of a very serious peanut butter recall.
8. Be careful using exclusive lingo. For several weeks, the Peanut Butter Church made announcements about an upcoming Potblessing event, about which it was clear everyone was excited. After 2 or 3 weeks, we finally realized it was a traditional church potluck, but not wanting to say the word “luck” in church, they cleverly changed the name to potblessing. We were shocked on a number of levels.

Celebration Church: Our New Church Home

After what seemed like an eternity of visiting churches, we finally found a place we call home: Celebration Church. It’s actually the very first church we visited when starting this process, and we’ve been an active part of the church ever since.

The Clear Winner?

Celebration is a church plant, and started small. Both of those meant it didn’t initially have as many of the features (you remember “the list”) as other churches we visited. For example, we were both fairly burned out coming from our church in Michigan, and wanted to find a place where we wouldn’t immediately have to be involved in everything. However, being a small church plant means there is plenty for everyone to do. We eventually felt Celebration could be helped through the gifts God has given us more so than some of the larger churches we visited.

Also, when we joined, and for some time thereafter, we were the only family in the church in our same family situation (just starting a family, with 2 young children). There weren’t any other young couples (yes, we still consider ourselves young). We kept hoping that with us being there, the next such couple to visit wouldn’t feel like they were the first.

Even though it didn’t win the point total on paper, we clearly felt this is where God wanted us.

The Denomination

Remember how I mentioned something about denominations providing checks, balances, and stability? When we first visited this church, it had a different name and was part of the Episcopalian Church. They were fairly open with us about some of the struggles they were experiencing denominationally, and kept us informed while we were visiting other churches. They soon left the Episcopal Church, and joined the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). Basically they are still an Anglican church, but now part of a relatively new denomination started by the Anglican Church in Nigeria.

Much has been written about the reasons for people leaving the Episcopal Church; suffice it to say it’s about far more than the one or two items you read about in the press. I don’t pretend to understand all the issues or the long road some of these life-long Episcopalians have traveled, but I can say with certainty they had very Scriptural reasons (e.g., dealing with issues of salvation).

We have much to learn about Anglicanism and its rich history. As with most other denominations, there is a spectrum of how its churches live out their faith, both in terms of theology and worship styles. Celebration celebrates much of the liturgy of the Anglican faith, using a nice blend of relaxed contemporariness while maintaining reverence and appreciating the historical faith.

Our Church Home

What the church has lacked in size, it has made up for with powerful exegetical teaching, rich and engaging corporate worship, and an encouraging body of believers. Our family has been challenged, encouraged, and discipled. We are grateful for Celebration’s faithfulness to God and His Word, and it’s been a humbling privilege to watch Celebration continue to grow in more than just numbers and programs.

Presently we’re trying to find a dentist near my work, as it’s time for the normal cleaning. After personal recommendations didn’t pan out, Rachel started by checking our insurance provider’s list of participating dentists in the area. From there, she went to the interwebs in search of information on said dentists. As it turns out, there is something called the Virginia Board of Dentistry, and they just saved me a mouth full of hurt. One of the dentists was listed in a Case Decision with the following publicly stated Order and Sanction,

Reprimand, monetary penalty of $4000 and probation with terms imposed for conducting his practice in a manner likely to cause injury to patients due to mental and physical incompetence.

Tempting, but I think I’ll try one of the other dentists first.

(1) The water company charges a $20 administration fee for switching the name on the account from the old owners to us, and tacks on a $60 deposit. They hold on to that $60 deposit until sometime after we close our account with them someday.

(2) The gas company has a $31 initiation charge.

(3) The electric company has a $15 connection fee.

It’s interesting to see how they all find creative terms for those 2 minutes they spend slapping your name on an account. Then there are the utilities where we actually have a choice of providers:

(4) We’ve been using Vonage for our phone service for a while now. They were a joy to have during the move. We were able to continue using our old phone number by simply hooking up our Vonage router to my brother’s network once we arrived. We kept that same number until we knew for sure where we would be purchasing a house. At that point I had a 10 minute phone call with them wherein they activated a new number for us with the local area code, and pointed our old number at it so both would work for a time while we transition to the new. By the time I hung up from that call, the new number was already active and routing to us.

(5) While we technically had a choice of who to use for Internet connectivity, the DSL route scared me because our house is 20,000 feet from the CO (and 15,000 feet is supposed to be the limit for DSL). I’m surprised Verizon even offered the service at that distance. So, we once again joined the ranks of Comcast customers. I must admit I enjoyed the 2 year hiatus, and wish I could have returned to Speakeasy. (Speakeasy has some of the best customer service I’ve ever experienced, not just with technology providers, but of any company.)

Ordering service from Comcast turned out to be a chore, probably involving a total of 3 hours on the phone with who knows how many different people and departments. I ordered the service through comcastoffers.com, as they got us a free cable modem, $125 cash back, and 6 months of service at $19.99. I just kept telling myself all the money we are saving was worth the headache of ordering. Today I got our first monthly invoice, and there are two incorrect charges. I wish I could say I’m surprised.

As for the service, Comcast says they provide up to 6 Mbps down. Even so, I was pleased to run some tests in excess of 5 Mbps this weekend (using a speed test). Have no fear, however: after two days of service, we had our first outage on Monday night lasting about 2 hours. Comcastic! Hopefully it’s not too much longer until Verizon provides FiOS in our area. Rumors are swirling about that it might be sometime in 2007.

All things considered, the move went very smoothly. It helped that about 2/3 of our possessions were still packed and stacked in boxes. We are also very fortunate that Rachel’s mom flew out from CA for the week to help make sure there were enough hands to care for Micah (and Moby).

After several days of living here, we’re still very excited about the house. While there are still plenty of boxes that need unpacking, items that need sorting and storing, and pictures that need to be hung, we are over the hump that divides the initial phase of feeling like you’re living out of a suit case and the phase where things start to feel like home again (in spite of the mess).

The house has all your standard features: bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, etc. It seems to have plenty of room for years to come, and even has a nice bedroom and bathroom for visiting guests. (Hint, hint. Come visit.)

It is comforting to look back at the events during our move from MI to VA, and see how God orchestrated the timing. On Aug. 2, 2006 (Rachel’s birthday), we received the call letting us know I had my full clearance to start my new job. The next day the house we eventually purchased in VA was put on the market. The day after that we put our GR house up for sale. After encountering multiple closed doors in the ensuing months while trying to find a new place to live, we decided to wait until our GR house sold before doing any more searching here in VA. The week before we were scheduled to begin the house hunt again, the house we ended up buying dropped its price low enough so it showed up on our radar (i.e., it was in our price range). Were it not for some timely roadblocks placed in front of us, we likely would have made an offer on a house much sooner, and it would not have worked out as well as our current house.

All that to say, we’re extremely grateful for God’s faithfulness, and the help of our whole family during this process.

Well, as of today we’re debt free … if only for a short time. We closed on our Michigan house today which means we no longer have a mortgage. Ahhh, what a great feeling. It also means we no longer have a house.

Because we weren’t in Michigan for the closing, the title company sent us all the documents overnight, with nicely colored arrow stickers pointing out the places on each page we needed to sign. Several of the pages required a notary. It was nice that we didn’t have to go to a title company to sign everything, but because we had to get these documents signed and back in the mail the same day, we had to find a notary that was open on a Saturday. We ended up at our local Pak Mail store, of all places. That’s right– we closed on our house at Pak Mail. They charged $3 for every page requiring a notary stamp, so thankfully there were only a few. Pictured is Rachel signing some of the pages while waiting in line. (Incidentally, we were waiting behind numerous folks desperately trying to ship boxes of gifts to friends and family. After hearing what they had to pay, even for the “no guarantees on the timing” packages, the beauty of online shopping was reinforced.)

So we’ll try to enjoy being debt free during the holidays this year, for come sometime around January 16 we’ll have a new mortgage to pay. Yep, we made an offer on a house Thursday morning, and it was accepted with no counter that evening. Woo-hoo! More details about that as things progress. It’s been a busy week.  Now we need to set a new target date for when we can once again say “we’re debt free” … this time hopefully while still owning a house.

Our goals seemed relatively simple:

1. get VA driver’s licenses for each of us

2. transfer the title on each car to VA

3. register each car

4. get license plates for each car

In order to do that, we had to do several other things first: get new insurance policies in VA, get an emissions inspection on each car, and get a safety inspection on each car. (And why does the county government have the right to force an inspection on my personal property?) All that having been done, we were done with all the prep work … sort-of.

In order to accomplish all the goals above, we had to compile a multitude of documents, including but not limited to: proof of insurance on each car, existing titles for each car, marriage license, birth certificates for both of us, proof of passed emissions inspection for each car, proof of passed safety inspection for each car, proof of purchase price for each car (no, they were not purchased in VA), proof of paid sales tax on each car (again: no, they were not purchased in VA), proof of residence in VA, our MI drivers licenses, and our social security cards.

Fortunately, my wife is the queen of preparations. Thanks to her diligent research (including online, multiple phone calls to VA DMVs and the MI Secretary of State, and snail mail correspondance with the MI Sect. of State), she compiled all our documents and had all our forms ready to go. To our amazement, the DMV didn’t require anything that we didn’t have in hand and we were able to accomplish all 4 goals in one trip.

On the plus side, the VA DMV offices accept credit/debit cards (a novel idea yet to be adopted by the MI Sect. of State branches), and we got our new drivers licenses on site rather than having to wait for them to come in the mail.

Having accomplished all that, we still needed to get county registration stickers, because that can’t be done at the DMV. Those arrived in the mail last week.

One remaining hurdle is getting license plates put on the front of our vehicles, since there is no spot to attach them in front. (Must be cars made in MI where that isn’t a requirement, or something.)

Lastly, we need to pay to our county what they call a “personal property tax.” It’s a tax you pay twice per year on each car you own, and it’s based on the value of your vehicle.

Once that’s done, I think we can officially declare that our cars have successfully made the move to VA. If anything can make you miss filling out a city income tax form once each year, this process might be it. Phew.