The Great Church Hunt, Part 1

Before we left California, I started looking up churches. We're Assembly of God (AG), so I looked on their national website, I searched with google, and I looked at the yellowpages online. When we thought we were going to live on the Florida side of the state line, I found a couple of churches I wanted to try out, and then really didn't look again.

Now that we're here, reality has set in.

We not living in Florida, so the churches that I found to try out are ~40 minutes away. But if the church is a good church, the drive won't bother me. We've done it before. When we lived in TN, we lived about 30-40 minutes way from our church, and we happily drove it twice a week. There aren't any AG churches near us. Well, there's one, but it's tiny and I don't really care for tiny churches.

That being said, we tried one of the churches last weekend.

The kids all went to their classes well enough (Luke has a bit of separation anxiety, so we expected him to be a little hesitant). Everything seemed ok until we got to the sanctuary and they started the worship service. Every. Single. Song. was all kick drum and electric guitar. And it was loud. So loud that my insides were vibrating...and I'm not a wimp when it comes to the sound during worship service (and those reading from SDFA, trust me when I tell you that it was AT LEAST 15-20 decibels louder than a typical Sunday there.). I didn't recognize any of the songs, and was a bit too distracted by the guitarists banging their heads to pay attention to the words on the screen. It was like a rock concert, and a rock concert is not where I want to be on Sunday morning.

All I kept telling myself was "just wait for the pastor. Don't make any judgments until you hear the pastor speak."

Well, I was a little disappointed, because I don't like being yelled at. I don't really mind you raising your voice for added emphasis, but if you want to yell the entire sermon at me, I'm tuning out. His analogies didn't make any sense, and he was all over the place. I couldn't keep up with his train of thought for anything! But even worse, I couldn't follow along in my bible, because the sanctuary lights never came back on.

After the service we went to pick the kids up and they had a FABULOUS time. One of the guys working in Children's Church is from San Diego (he's here for Master's Commission, for those that know what that is).

I think the worst part for me, though, was how hard Luke was crying when we picked him up from the nursery. He was snubbing he was crying so hard, so I didn't believe the lady when she said that he just started crying. I'm his mom, I know him better than that. You know that cry they do when their head jerks a little to the side, in hiccup fashion? Yeah, that's what he was doing.

On our way out, the pastor walks up to us and introduces himself. Nice, right? We thought so too, really. But, he'd already gotten relaxed for the afternoon with his tie off and his top two buttons unbuttoned. There are several things in my life I'm better off not knowing, and how much hair my pastor has on his chest is one of those things :-). He was very nice though, and made us feel welcome. And he told us that that the 9 am service was completely different. He said it was "more traditional, with some contemporary music. It's not all hymns." He admitted the later service was a little much for some people. Ya think?

For the sake of fairness, cause, well, San Diego First Assembly is a tough act to follow, we'll try again and try the 9 am service. Maybe.

Oh, the New Visitor gift at this church was homemade chocolate chip cookies! They were very good, too.