The Search for a Church

Next month marks one year since my family moved to Sidney, Montana. I suppose it's about time for us to find a home church here.

Don't misunderstand me, we've tried to find a church. As Christians, my wife and I know the Bible says "Do not neglect the assembling of yourselves together" (Hebrews 10:25). And besides just not wanting to disobey a command of the Scriptures, we sincerely do want to belong to a community of believers again.

Before we moved to Montana three years ago, we were very much involved in a seeker-friendly church in Hillsboro, Ohio. Lauren and I both enjoyed our small groups, and I helped out with multimedia, building slideshows for Sunday morning services and running them. When we moved to Glendive, we again got involved in a local church and built relationships, though not as much as back in Ohio due to living half hour away from our church as opposed to up the block.

Since moving to Sidney, we've visited three local churches, attending one of them for several weeks. We just haven't felt "comfortable" with any of our options. 

And I cringe to use that word - "comfortable." Every time Lauren and I discuss the churches in Sidney, I pause before using that word. The Christian life isn't about comfort, is it? Yes and no. It is and it isn't.

If what makes you comfortable is wickedness and self-indulgence, then pursuing comfort is going to interfere with rather than facilitate the righteous life God has called you to in Christ Jesus. If, on the other hand, spiritual torpor and exalting human philosophy and opinion and tradition over God's Word makes you spiritually uncomfortable, it can be 'OK' to let your discomfort be important to you.

But what happens when you're in a town where you don't feel comfortable attending any of the local churches, but you also don't feel comfortable staying home? 

There's the third option of expanding your search radius and attending a more distant church you feel comfortable with, and we certainly have done that before. Indeed, in Ohio we drove an hour each way for a while to attend our seeker-friendly church in Hillsboro, and in Glendive we had no choice but to drive since we were living in the countryside, a half an hour's drive from any church. But I don't feel particularly "comfortable" with commuting long distance to attend a church. The reason being simple - the longer the commute to a church, the harder it is to get involved in a meaningful way in the lives of your fellow believers, which seems, after all, like one of the major reasons to be part of a church in the first place.

If you drive a long way to attend a church you like, but you're not really able to get involved in the lives of the believers there, why are you going? To hear the preaching? There are podcasts galore for that. To check a box legalistically, marking off attendance for the sake of attendance? That seems worse than worthless.

Our three options are each unsuitable and "uncomfortable." So what do we do? That question has been plaguing me for the past year.

To further complicate matters, my schedule for work has me working every other Sunday. And with five young children, my wife isn't exactly keen on visiting churches without me. If our kiddos are feeling ornery and not particularly obedient on a Sunday where she attends and I'm not there, the potential for mayhem and embarrassment is very real. But attending every other week, or visiting new churches every other week - it definitely slows the process down.