My life began in church. Literally! My dad was pastor and one of my earliest memories is of sitting in the back pew copying the Church Hymnal into a notebook.
I remember Sunday schools with Rebecca—she always had candy to give out. Potlucks, vacation Bible school, and church workdays are early memories too.
My entire social community consisted of our church. We enjoyed each other. Jared, Doug, and Philip were some of my favorite friends. Sometimes we would go with our moms to the sewing circle and play outside while they mended our socks (or whatever they did in there).
Every couple of months or so our church would get together with other “like-minded” churches in the area and have a “singspiration.” I always enjoyed those times as well because we got to visit friends in other areas of our state. And boy, was our singing good! Everyone could sing, and everyone did sing. No musical instruments—just raw human vibrato.
One time, while at a singspiration a couple of hours away, the power went off while singing. It was storming outside and a tree had knocked a powerline down. We lit candles and kept on singing.
This was church life.
Since Dad was pastor, we often hosted the guest speakers who’d come through for revival meetings. After each evening of meetings, we’d go home and sit around the living room eating popcorn and chips and salsa. Mom liked to make a salsa with sour cream mixed in, which I never liked, because it diluted the salsa.
But that’s one of my early memories of Mom.
Perhaps the earliest, though, is of seeing her crying at the front of our church with a group of ladies huddled around her. Dad was on the other side of the room, with a group of men around him. I didn’t know what was going on, but I loved my mom and it made me sad that she was crying.
Around that same time, I remember seeing her crying with her sisters in the kitchen at my grandparent’s house. Again, I didn’t know why Mom was crying, but I knew it meant something serious was wrong.
Dad and Mom had a lot of meetings during that season. Either we’d all go to church and us kids would play outside while the adults had meetings, or someone would babysit us and only Dad and Mom went to the meetings. Again, I didn’t know what was up—I only knew it was causing Dad and Mom a lot of stress and grief.
There was a lot of talk about things that are “Biblical” and things that are not. I didn’t know what that meant, but I caught on that it had something to do with the coverings the ladies wore, the black coats every preacher wore, the fact we never had instruments for our singing, and other stuff like that.
Dad felt like our “denomination” added too much on to the teachings of Christ. He said we lacked life, and I didn’t really understand what he was saying.
I only know we eventually stopped going to that church.
Others stopped going as well.
A few months later we started a new church—this one in town, instead of in the country. We still had potlucks and workdays. We still ate popcorn and salsa with sour cream. In fact, our ladies still wore coverings and long dresses.
But the styles changed. And we began using guitar during some of our singing.
And we interacted with more people who didn’t look exactly like us.
Today, church life is drastically different than it was back when I was young. In fact, we don’t even meet in a church—we meet in a house.
But I find that whether it’s people in our local church or people who share stories with me from other places, we’re still looking for life. We’re still asking about what is “Biblical” and what is not.
And some are concluding, not unlike my parents did many years ago, that in order to find true life they must leave.
Everyone starts somewhere. And for many of us, we started at church. But life is fluid.
We started at church. Where will we end?
As we go throughout this series, I’d love to hear your feedback. Feel free to share in the comments below your earliest memories of church (and specifically, you’re earliest awareness that people leave your church).
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