Shopping or Searching

Am I church shopping, or searching for the place God wants me? That's a question I have struggled with extensively as part of this project. It's a complicated answer with a lot of prickly issue to go with it. I have been accused of church shopping at least four times this year by a coworker, an acquaintance from my old church, one of my neighbors, and an online high school acquaintance. But am I?

From the way I write about the churches I go to, it can definitely be spun that I am church shopping. The concept of church shopping runs something like this: I don't like the church I'm going to for whatever reason, so I'll simply find another church that I do like. The key word in that statement is: LIKE. The typical scenario is that for some reason, or somehow, I no longer like the church I'm going to, so instead of working within the church or somehow trying to change (or accept) the issue, I leave and find a church that doesn't have the issue or somehow treats me differently.

So why should a person leave a church? There are very few reasons, but one of them, and the one that matters the most to me is: willfully disregarding the Bible or willfully doing wrong. What constitutes willfully doing wrong? Intentionally lying would be one example. But even that is not sufficient cause. It would have to be systematic, continuous, and, when pointed out or confronted, disregarded and ignored by the powers that be. Unfortunately those things do happen in churches. There are other scenarios that would qualify; the above was not mine.

When a person experiences the kind of situation I just described, it heightens the awareness of that person when reengaging in another scenario. In the case of looking for a church, and more specifically in my case, it means that the churches I visit are thoroughly examined before I would be willing to join. Some churches are easy to weed out of the mix because they exhibit bad behavior right up front. Others may be better at covering it up, but if it exists, it will come out.

There is a line from the movie Pollyanna: "When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will." And that's the problem with a project like this. It is VERY easy once a person has been hurt to look for the bad in a situation. I hope that's not what I'm doing.

The sole criteria for finding a church should be: is this where God wants me? Unfortunately, it very rarely is. In my case, I believe that where God wants me involves certain things for certain reasons. One of those is: I believe I am supposed to get married. Why? It's due to I Corinthians 7:9. It says, "But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." This part of I Cor. talks about being single, how Paul wishes we could all be single so that we could concentrate on serving God only. But this little clause was inserted for those of us who have issues being single. That being the case for me, I believe it is my duty to solve that self control issue as soon as possible. Obviously there's more to it than this, but this post isn't the place to go into it. Maybe some day later...