On the hunt...

When you want to apply to college, buy a house, buy a car, or even choose a resturaunt to go to, what do you do? For me, I type it into google and research my choices. What is the best choice for me? You can learn so much information just by googling it and although, you probably shouldn't base a huge decision like buying house based on what you read or saw on the internet. But what you see and read are reasons why you want to go visit that house. When trying to find a new church to go to it really is not that simple. I can't just type "Churches in Wheaton" into google, I'll get way too many choices. And I haven't seen a website that rates churches, because how can you? People who have a church they go to on a regular bases obviously like the church they go to, how can someone give a non-bias opioion of their church when they go there? I wish it was as easy as the show House Hunters on HGTV (one of my favorite shows, as you could probably tell, hense the title of the blog!) but it's not.

When I make other decisions in my life I look at the facts, like when looking for a college. What school has a good education program? How much does it cost? How far away is it from home? I could go on my laptop and find all that information out about all the colleges in the United States just while sitting in my own bed. Church hunting is not that easy. You have to physically go to different churches and see what is best for you, where do you feel most comfortable, and where do you think God is calling you to go. This is the dilema my sister, Aubrey, and I face.

We recently left a church we loved due to decisions made by the leadership of the church. We just didn't see how we could continue to go and serve with a church that we couldn't trust the people who were "in charge." It was one of the hardest decisions of my life so far. Aubrey and I both helped with the middle school ministry so we not only had to leave we had to say goodbye to so many kids we love and kids we have watched grow up.

So, this is where we are at right now. Church-less. We took a little time off from going to church to process and we now feel that we are ready to start our adventure as Church Hunters. Last night we wrote down 8 churches in the area that we had heard good things about and we put each piece into a flower pot. Each week we are going to pick a piece of paper at random and go to that church. Hopefully through this process we'll be able to figure out a new home church for us, somewhere where we feel we can grow, worship and serve God.

This is our journey. A place where we can write about what we thought, felt, etc. And maybe we'll be able to help other people who are on the same journey as us.