Back To Basics

Most of you may or may not know that I am a christian. Well if didn't, then there you are, you know now.

But for the past 9 or so months I have not been committed to going to a church regularly. Long story short, I felt no need to go to church during my later months at Year In The Son at Tabor because YITS had become my 'christian community'. It was almost the perfect community I had ever experienced, we were so much like a family, including the lecturers and small group leaders. Low and behold, nearly six months later YITS had concluded and I was still not going to a church (I say 'a' because I had gone to a few every now and again).

Still now I am pretty much drifting from church to church, not sure where my home is. But today I have been thinking about church and remembered that I have not found a home yet, neither have I gone to any church service for over a month.

I have finally decided that I don't really like big churches. The big churches I speak of do not necessarily have anything wrong with them, it's just I feel a few of them are superficial or very commercialised. They don't tend to care much about the small people. The do acknowledge, and perhaps even care about, new people within the church. All I get is a handshake, form to fill out and countless emails or phone calls weeks after attending. It just doesn't seem very warm or welcoming. Another thing I don't like about big churches is the size, in people sense, I could so very easily get lost in amongst the congregation... and I have. It's so easy to miss one week, then the next and so on, and no one would ever notice I was ever there.

So I am set on going to a church where almost everything is back to basics. A little contemporary mix is okay, but I don't want to go somewhere that is completely submerged in modernism that they forget about being real.

As a child, my grandparents on my dad's side used to take me and my brother to a salvation army church near the city on Saturday mornings (yes, Saturday morning church service) where we would help open the church up, go to the service, plod along to kids club (which more than often would consist of me, my brother and one or two other children) and then enjoy consuming morning tea and watching the elderly people chat about the weather, what they did this week or how fast we were growing up. During the service, we'd also sing from the hymns books along to the organ and/or piano. Back then I may not have appreciated it as much, but looking back now, I think that's a romantic kind of church that I'd like to be apart of now. Not romantic as in couples kissing, but the romance you feel of a warm spring day or a bird singing sweetly or seeing an old man have almost some kind of secret and joyful conversation with his grandchild. It seems funny, that almost a year ago, I was going to a presbyterian church in the outer east suburbs of Melbourne and I couldn't find a good thing about being there, I actually considered it a bit slow and boring. But if I were going to a church like that now, I'd find so much appreciation in the singing of Psalms or chatting with the church folk after the service. Perhaps I have matured?

Anyway, so I now really begin my searching for a church in which I feel at home at. I am considering going to a small uniting church, but I guess I won't know if I'll like it unless I go.

I'll report about that in my next post. =]