"You're WHAT????"

Few weeks ago we ‘bumped’ into some friends from a former church who we hadn’t seen in a number of years. After the initial small talk had been dealt with, they inquired as to what church we were now attending, mentioning one in the nearby town as being the most probable. Our answer, that no, we were now going to a church some distance away, brought a look of shocked disbelief to their faces. Had we said we were going up to ski every weekend or up to a cottage to snowmobile, that would have been accepted with nothing other than a raised eyebrow saying ‘really, at your age?’.

This conversation has left me wondering WHY our driving to that church was more astonishing to them then spending the same time going skiing would have been. It says something about the society we live in, but also about the commitment expected of church-goers by members of that church, that it was seen that way.

Lent seems like an appropriate time to think about not only just what our personal commitment is to church attendance but also to why we feel the way we do about both our own commitment, as well as the commitment of others [and yes, I do think they are linked]. I believe we read our motives into the action of others.

In the last number of years my husband and I went for periods of weeks or even months without going to church. We did this because we couldn’t find a place where we felt ‘at home’, ‘at home’ with the words in the music and ‘at home’ with the words in the sermons. [As musicians and educators, those parts of the service resonate most deeply with us.] However at the same time, we felt something was missing from our life.

Finding a church where we feel ‘at home’ has resolved those feelings and so we attend whenever we can. And yes, I would expect anyone else who like us have been weekly attendees at church over a period of decades, would feel a similar loss in their lives and do whatever they could to repair that loss. Unfortunately the church we have found is over an hours drive away and so time constraints sometimes get in the way of our attendance as does the difference in weather conditions over that distance.

I can only posit that those people who are amazed at hearing we are driving that distance to church aren’t finding that the church they are currently attending is offering them something more that a ski slope or a cottage would. Perhaps it is only when that church is no longer meeting their needs, or is no longer there, that they will find out just what church means to them.

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