My Experience Changing Churches

[CC1]

I am not a church jumper. Until a couple of years ago I had only attended two churches in the last 26 years.

Because we moved about 45 minutes from our Nashville church a few years ago it became too hard on my wife after her back surgery to travel that far then sit for several hours.

About a year ago we found a new church home in our town outside of Nashville. It is a church of about 300-400 that is growing and doing great things. It was a church plant from nothing that met in a roller skating rink the first few years and now has prime property in a great part of town and a nice four year old sanctuary.

The pastor is a great man who thinks so much like I do it is scary. Doctrinally and pretty much anything else I have heard him speak about we are in lockstep. Everything has been great at our new church home.

The only problem is that a few months after we made this our church home our daughter who married a Church of Christ man and was attending a progressive Baptist church started attending with her husband a new (2 year old) work begun by the former Youth Pastor of the UPC church in our town.

Without going into a long history of the situation I can tell you I was very pleased that her and her husband were attending a Spirit filled church. Not only did they make this their church home but have gotten very active in the church with my daughter ministering as one of the praise and worship singers. Last fall my daughter felt she wanted to be rebaptized which she did and around that same time she spoke in tongues I believe for the first time.

Of course we were thrilled with the idea of our daughter using her musical talent in church, which up to now has been used in a secular fashion. We have gone to our churches early service a few times then over to her church when they have had something special. We love her pastor and are impressed with this young church plant.

In just over two years this pastor has grown this church into about 150 people between the two Sunday services. It has a big outreach into the College community here and also people who would typically be considered unchurched. Because of that demographic there are not a lot of older established tithe payers supporting the church (although there is one NASA engineer).

While I typically don't care for attending small churches we really like this church and the pastor and what it has done for our family. I have been struggling with several months with whether or not my wife and I should plug into this church and help out. This has been difficult because of my love for our church and pastor.

Finally this last Sunday without telling my wife what I was going to do I went up to my pastor after service and told him what my internal struggle was. He knew about our daughter and knows and likes her young pastor. I am not a weatlhy man but I have a good enough job that my tithe is significant for most churches including my growing one. I told him I had prayed about this situation and did not have a clear direction yet, that I loved him and our church.

I had dreaded this conversation because in my religious background rarely if ever did a pastor think it was the will of a tithe payer to leave. Especially just to go to another church in the same town. However my pastor lived up to my high opinion of him by telling us "Why don't you take six months or so and go to your daughters church. Tell the pastor you are not making a long term committment yet but want to help out for these months and see how things go". He went on to say that he knows that church was a young church that needed elders and established people and it might well be the place God wants me to be, that doing what he suggested would let my wife and myself discover if that was the case, and that if it was we had his blessing and he would always be there for us.

I can't express what a relief and blessing it was for my pastor to handle this situation like he has. It made me love and respect him that much more.