Church Shopping

When we first arrived, it was a big priority to find a solid Bible-teaching church. We had gone to a church here back when we lived in Mililani pre-kids. But over the past 13 years, our view of a solid church had changed quite a lot. Having been in a very strong theologically sound church for the past 12 years and raising our kids in that one their whole lives, we wanted to choose carefully.

So began our journey of church shopping. We had only been on the island for 3 days when we tried out a Calvary Chapel close to our home. We had enjoyed this denomination in another place we had lived, and so it seemed natural to start there. When we arrived, there were 2 children, and our family made up 1/3 of the congregation! Everyone was really nice and we even found someone from Chiloquin, Oregon! Everyone smiled and seemed nice, but I felt like we were being watched the entire time. I had to fight back tears during the worship service because it reminded me that it was very different from our home church and that we had just done something crazy and left everything familiar to try out this adventure where everything was different. I LOVED the preacher. He was great, but we decided to move on and try a few more.

Next we tried a church that the kids would be going to AWANA at. It seemed like a logical choice. And I really hoped it would be the one. It was teeming with families, many of them homeschoolers, or so I heard. I tried this church out one week while Cliff worked, and brought him back the next. We both agreed that this was not the one, though it felt awkward telling the AWANA people that we had decided to look elsewhere. The pastor was very friendly, but his messsage was somewhat arrogant and condescending to the unbelieving and he didn't teach exegetically. Also, when the children's pastor got up to give a message to the children, our kids went up. She pulled three things out of a bag. When she got to the last one, she said, "And this is one thing we could never, ever, do without in kids church!" Mason said he was sure it would be a Bible.... but no. It was... wait for it... Goldfish Crackers! Haha. It was pretty funny. At this point I was really trying to not be critical about little things. I'm sure they used the Bible in their lessons, but the whole vibe, combined with the fact that not one person said hi to us in two weeks, had us want to keep looking.

Cliff tried a church plant out from the church we had gone to when we lived here a short time before and decided that wasn't for us too. It was a large, vibrant church that was seeing tons of growth, but it had very shallow, "tickle your ear" teaching. He knew he didn't want us to go there, even though they had really fun youth group activities for Mason and Kaiah.

A few other churches nearby were ruled out just by the websites and by their healing services. Call me critical. I know I fight that, but these churches really mirrored the ones seen on TV telling us that if you give them your money, God will bless you more. And if you don't get healed, you don't have enough faith.

We wanted to try another church that meets in a mall. I went with all the kids on another day that Cliff worked and realized that I had gotten two churches mixed up! I went to one of the prosperity gospel ones, instead of the one I wanted to try that was right down the road. By the time we figured out where the right one was and drove over there, it was halfway through the service... so we just drove by, and thought about coming back later.

By this point, we were starting to feel a little frustrated. We honestly didn't think it would be this hard to find something that would fit.

We had heard of a church about 30 minutes from us that had solid Bible teaching. So we tried it. It was great! The teaching seemed good. The kids enjoyed the kids programs, and there were even a few homeschool families. I really clicked with one gal who had a very similar story to ours. She was so nice. She got us hooked up with people from our side of the island, invited me over for coffee, and even had adopted her 4th child. I was beginning to really hope this was our church. We started going to the Bible study group near us, and I even went on the women's retreat. But as time wore on, we were having a hard time with the fact that people were spread all over the island and we felt like we were missing the community part of church. Most of the people that had kids our kids ages lived 45 minutes away from us and I knew that that would be difficult for us distance-wise. I also noticed that there was a lot of wealth in that church, which is not bad, but it made it difficult for us to participate in some of the activities they did. It also appeared that there was not a lot of outreach going on in that church. There was, however, a lot of surfing and playing with fellow church friends, which is also not bad... we had just been hoping for something a little different.

Man, are we picky!!

But, there is this catch in your spirit that happens sometimes, when you are walking with the Lord. It's unsettling. You can ignore it for only so long before you clearly realize that God does not have that situation for you. This happened about 3 weeks into going to this church.

We decided to try a few more closer to home before making a decision.

Another week that Cliff was working I tried a church that was very close to us. When we walked in, we were quite a sight apparently! Again, we made up about 1/3 of the church. Jaws dropped. People stared. And there was a  developmentally delayed teenager with no inhibitions or personal space boundaries, who walked up to Kaiah and started stroking her arm while staring at her eyes 6 inches from her face. I'm not kidding. Lochlan was pretty oblivious to the whole thing and kept peppering me with question after question, while Cambria held a death grip on my arm. I tried to coach Kaiah to just smile and say something nice to the girl who was practically sitting in her lap and being yelled at by a nearby adult, when I noticed Mason started crying. He was begging for this not to be the church we chose. This made me cry and of course all of this happened while people were staring... and the pastor, so excited to see new people at his church, came over to say hello :) He was super nice and immediately launched into a pitch about how the church wasn't that big yet, and it had an unusually high proportion of mentally delayed people, and he wasn't sure why that was, and could Mason play football with his son? and he introduced me to his wife. I honestly really liked the guy, but he said, "Let's stomp on the Devil!" at least 3 times during his sermon. His church was filled with people that Jesus would have gravitated toward and ministered to. They were definitely misfits, drug addicts, scantily clad women, and immature believers, if not young unbelievers altogether, which is great! I recognized the task before him, and I really respected him for plugging away at it for 8 years, not seeing a lot of fruit. He was so funny when he opened the mic for people to share what the Lord had been doing. People got up there, reluctantly, and said things like, "I'm going to be out of town next week, does anyone want to play guitar for me?" and "We watched the game at my house last Saturday." Each time anyone said anything (I think only 3 people got up) the pastor clapped his hands and thanked them for sharing... he was just thrilled anyone said anything! :) I felt kind of guilty for not considering that church further, but we decided to keep looking.

One of the people in the Bible study we had been going to kindly suggested a church that had just started 1 year before called Trade Wind Communities that was nearby. So we tried it out. It was good. The pastor preached the Bible. The people were friendly, and it was fairly close to our house. The only problem was that the oldest kid there was 7. Our kids were the oldest kids in the church. Coming from a huge well-established church with a great youth group and children's church for the kids, this felt too sad to consider. We had hoped the kids would be able to make good friends with the kids at whichever church we chose.

So feeling like we had exhausted all of the good options, we went back to the church we had gone to for 3 weeks (Harbor Church). We went for another 3 weeks when Cliff and I had a conversation. We both felt "intrigued" by the possibility of setting down roots with the new church plant. It would be different than we had planned. The kids wouldn't have any friends there. We'd have to find them somewhere else. But we prayed about it, told the kids that we were going to commit to this tiny 40-50 person church for now, and that hopefully we could be a blessing there, learn some new things ourselves, and be a family with older kids that would hopefully attract other families with older kids.

The next morning, after we made the decision to stick with Trade Winds, I saw a quote from Mark Twain, that a friend had put on her facebook page, regarding an adventurous move they were soon taking. It said, "It's time to leave the safe harbor and catch the tradewinds in your sail." WHAT??! We are not superstitious or anything, but what a coincidence that we made the decision to leave Harbor Church the night before and commit to Trade Wind Communities :) It was fun anyway.

We've been here for 7 months or so. Cliff is now co-leading a home Bible study community group that was started because of growth we are experiencing. Also, there have been 3 families with older kids that have begin faithfully coming every week. We really respect the teaching of the pastor and are learning a lot about living in the world and reaching out to non-believers around us in a natural and fun way, but not "being of the world."

Here are a few of the fun activities we've had with our neighbors! 

Nerf Wars on Thanksgiving

 Trick-or-Treating on Halloween

 Shave Ice at the zoo

I also exercise every week on the beach with a bunch of other moms. We go out sans kids on occasion as well. It has been great getting to know these gals from the community!

The kids really look forward to going to church every week, even though there is no junior high program and the classes are so small. Kaiah and Cambria are only girls in the 1st-8th grade group. And there have been days when our kids have accounted for more than half of the kids in the class we teach. There have been some growing pains, and we've made a few mistakes along the way, but it has been a positive experience for us and the kids to learn to serve even when we don't to get experience the activities that we would have at our church in Oregon.

 Another fun thing is that I have developed a relationship with a single mom who is a new believer... the first to accept Christ since TWC began. We meet (almost) weekly and read together, discuss scripture, and pray. She is discovering so much healing, forgiveness, and fruits of the Spirit. It is exciting to watch her transform!

A couple of months ago she and 4 other people were baptized in the ocean, and it was such a privilege to watch even though it poured on us all the whole time!

 

It has been an interesting process for sure, as living on an island has many small town moments, which makes church shopping kind of like dating for a while and then breaking up while still having to interact with people you didn't "choose." We still regularly see people from the church we tried for 6 weeks. People from AWANA are still kind, but don't ask why we didn't stay. Every week we see friends at our homeschool co-op because they were the ones who told us about it in the first place. I really enjoy being around them and thankfully it doesn't feel awkward even though we didn't ultimately go to their church. :) We have been encouraged from so many people from so many different churches to find the place that fits our family the best for this season in our lives. It truly feels like the body of Christ is meeting in different locations, not a bunch of warring or competing groups that criticize each others way of doing things. 

So for now, we have found a place to belong. Cliff was taking notes last week and writing the sentence, "Jesus made disciples who made disciples." But auto-correct changed it to "Jesus made disciples who made disco." A true picture of the heart of our church and the fun that we have living life together and in the community. At least that's the goal!