Honey Moon

I have come to this realization over the past two years being at Lincoln. Whenever I go home and have conversations about church with some of my close friends that I grew up with or my close family I hear the same complaint.

"Well we are just looking for some deeper teaching." Or

"We just want a different style of worship"

Now I grew up with these people and my home church honed a lot of these people. Community Christian Church is where we found our home. We, being a great deal of misfits and out laws came together to form a community that could not be denied or dealt with. We were a force to be reckoned with. We understood the mission that we were living our lives for and we grasped what the cost truly was.

Our small groups were constantly filled with the people that we lived life with. Our services were compiled with the misfits and the outlaws that we knew needed something more than their old and meidocre lives.

Many of us have stayed extremley close and if one of us was in desperate need I know the others would not hesitate to show up in a minute.

But alas, high school ended. Three of my close friends got married. The rest went to college and are doing their own thing. Change happened.

So now I come home every once in a while and I see these people and we have the same old conversation. We laugh and cry about the memories and we talk about the present. And that old conversation comes up. I feel like I am constantly defending the home that I have loved for such a long time.

So after thinking about my friends and my family's pleas I have come to a slight conclusion. It doesn't involved getting married, it involves understanding the cost of being a christ follower in a place that is constantly changing.

I call it the honey moon affect.

Let me paint it for you.

So we have a church goer who has been attedning the same church for over five to ten years. This church goer found God at this church and found a true sense of community there. However, the church started growing and things started changing. This church goer saw her peers leaving for every excuse in the book.

This church goer stuck it out though. Waiting for the day when things became familer again. Finally the church goer starts complaning about the service. "The teaching isn't deep enough, the worship is to loud. It's gotten to big. No more community."

So the church goer leaves. Breaks ties with a community that has helped develop and streghthen them in Christ. The church goer goes to a different church and finds two things.

First is that they can't find a church to their liking. So they become church drop-outs, thinking that they can make it on their own, because you can be a Christian without going to church.

Or second, they find a church where there is deeper teaching. Better worship. Or smaller setting. They get involved and have a new sense of being. Two to five years later they have found themselves in the same predicament. Things have started to change or have just remained the same. Either way the church goer gets frustrated and starts complaining again.

Here's why. The church goer can go to a church that has deeper teaching or better worship and they will feel more mature. Maybe because they will start learning more Greek words. Maybe because they will get that great sensation after service. But it won't last simply because they have not connected. There is no risk in getting involved in a new church every five years. The church goer will remain tactfully detachted with looking like they are extremley involved. You don't become mature unless you start knowing Christ himself. You need to take charge of your relationship. And another thing, if you truly went to service every week and had the ability to live out the theological truths being spoken out in the next week then you are a better person than I.

The church is a body of believers that mess up. Things change, people leave. If you are not willing to invest everything into the bride that Christ loves with everything than don't attend in the first place.

Here this, I know that there are things that Community Christian Church needs to work on. They are a large community full of redeemed people. No church is perfect. However, I found God there. I have seen my closest friends not only find God but find their spouses as well. I have seen drug and sex addicted friends find God there. I know that God is active in that community and I am not willing to slander its name because I may disagree with one thing or a another.

My allegiance lies with Christ but I cannot deny when God is working in a body of believers.