In Search of Spiritual Community
Dear God,
I have lived in this urban center for 2.5 years and I believe I am at a crossroads when it comes to experiencing spiritual community in my church. I feel that my relations with others in our family's place of worship have plateaued. For the most part, gone are the initial feelings of excitement in meeting new people and being the object of another family's hospitality. Individuals have become familiar in faces only, since I don't know acquaintances or peripheral friends any better than I did a year ago.
I acknowledge that there is a honeymoon period when it comes to church experience. In the beginning, all is refreshing, warm and inviting. The positives of an organization attract you to stay. As time progresses, the negatives begin to stack up like overdue bills. The ugliness of organized (or lack thereof) religion grotesquely masks the beauty that is present. Within time, the niggling thought of checking-out begins to penetrate the shaky wall of loyalty.
Lord, I don't enjoy being in this space. I detest viewing my church attendance more as an obligation than a joy. Many a Sunday, my thoughts are: Here we go again. Pile kids into car. Rush off to church. Frantically sit down for service. Keep kids on task during service. Kind of sing songs. Kind of listen to sermon. Kind of daydream about what I need to do at home. Say "Hi. Bye." to a few people and assure all that, "I'm fine," when I had a rotten week prior to. I gotta smile. I gotta suppress. I gotta stop thinking. After all, most people would NOT like to know what's going through this head of mine!
This is so not spiritual community.
Granted, my husband and I are in a unique stage of life when our church attendance is done more out of the desire to teach our children that there is value in celebrating YOU, God Almighty, together. However, is Sunday Morning the space and time in which we truly build spiritual community, where individuals and families dialogue together for the purpose of growth, authentically share their highs and lows in prayer, and genuinely walk along side each other in the faith?
Sadly, I don't think so.
Thus, the crossroads. Something has to change! Either we drone on with plastered smiles and empty spiritual tanks Sunday after Sunday. Or we do something about it. Since church hopping is not our style, we choose to invite others to go deeper. Lord, we want to open up our home for the sake of spiritual community. We desire a multi-age, multi-stage group of people to study a book of the Bible together while praying for each other's lives in a genuine way. We acknowledge it will not be perfect, especially as we have our two little kids to take care of in the midst of study. But what better example for us to set for them, that their parents want to go beyond the shallow to the risky waters where we have to hold on to you, God, for dear life.
Lord, we pray, that you will work in hearts of others to take the plunge with us.
Holding on to You, my Eternal Life Preserver,
Rain
To my readers: I blogged along this vein of thought about a year ago. Check out the post Going Deeper on Sunday (Part 1), if interested.
I have lived in this urban center for 2.5 years and I believe I am at a crossroads when it comes to experiencing spiritual community in my church. I feel that my relations with others in our family's place of worship have plateaued. For the most part, gone are the initial feelings of excitement in meeting new people and being the object of another family's hospitality. Individuals have become familiar in faces only, since I don't know acquaintances or peripheral friends any better than I did a year ago.
I acknowledge that there is a honeymoon period when it comes to church experience. In the beginning, all is refreshing, warm and inviting. The positives of an organization attract you to stay. As time progresses, the negatives begin to stack up like overdue bills. The ugliness of organized (or lack thereof) religion grotesquely masks the beauty that is present. Within time, the niggling thought of checking-out begins to penetrate the shaky wall of loyalty.
Lord, I don't enjoy being in this space. I detest viewing my church attendance more as an obligation than a joy. Many a Sunday, my thoughts are: Here we go again. Pile kids into car. Rush off to church. Frantically sit down for service. Keep kids on task during service. Kind of sing songs. Kind of listen to sermon. Kind of daydream about what I need to do at home. Say "Hi. Bye." to a few people and assure all that, "I'm fine," when I had a rotten week prior to. I gotta smile. I gotta suppress. I gotta stop thinking. After all, most people would NOT like to know what's going through this head of mine!
This is so not spiritual community.
Granted, my husband and I are in a unique stage of life when our church attendance is done more out of the desire to teach our children that there is value in celebrating YOU, God Almighty, together. However, is Sunday Morning the space and time in which we truly build spiritual community, where individuals and families dialogue together for the purpose of growth, authentically share their highs and lows in prayer, and genuinely walk along side each other in the faith?
Sadly, I don't think so.
Thus, the crossroads. Something has to change! Either we drone on with plastered smiles and empty spiritual tanks Sunday after Sunday. Or we do something about it. Since church hopping is not our style, we choose to invite others to go deeper. Lord, we want to open up our home for the sake of spiritual community. We desire a multi-age, multi-stage group of people to study a book of the Bible together while praying for each other's lives in a genuine way. We acknowledge it will not be perfect, especially as we have our two little kids to take care of in the midst of study. But what better example for us to set for them, that their parents want to go beyond the shallow to the risky waters where we have to hold on to you, God, for dear life.
Lord, we pray, that you will work in hearts of others to take the plunge with us.
Holding on to You, my Eternal Life Preserver,
Rain
To my readers: I blogged along this vein of thought about a year ago. Check out the post Going Deeper on Sunday (Part 1), if interested.