Saturday, December 17, 2011

Church Shopping.

Well so far the move to Ohio has gone pretty smooth. I am learning my job. The kids like their school. Dan seems to be figuring his job out.  The animals seem to be adjusting. We are running non-stop all week. The 8th graders are in the High School band here and the band plays at the home basketball games so we have been enjoying some Piketon Redstreaks basketball (what exactly is a red streak anyway?)


The one area we haven't quite figured out is a church. How do you choose a church in an area where you don't know anyone.  There are so many to visit. So much to consider. This is a small community but I think there are as many churches as there are people. Small churches. Large churches. Non-denominational churches. Denominational churches of all kinds. Churches with contemporary worship. Churches with traditional worship. To make matters more complicated we are out in the country (actually around here we are "in the Hollow") and that puts us between two small towns. It is actually 6.2 miles to one town and 6.4 to another so that makes two small towns worth of churches to choose from. Now just 10 miles to the North there is a larger town (still pretty small) that has even more churches to choose from.  Soooo, how do you decide. I like small churches like the one we visited on mission trip this summer but they don't have very large youth groups. I like the crazy more contemporary ones in Waverly but while that is close it isn't the town where the kids go to school.


I wanted to visit some of the smaller nondenominational churches but to be honest I am a little afraid. One of the ladies I work with said she stumbled on to a "snake handling" church a couple hours from here. I am a little hesitant to just show up at some of these little churches not knowing anything about them.

So do we stick with what we know? There is a church here that reminded me so much of Newington that I felt like I was home the first day we visited. I feel like we should visit some other places but truth be told I think I just answered my own question. Funny how sometimes all you really need is to lay it all out there and then you wonder what you were struggling with in the first place.


Shell