My Church

Disclaimer: This post is not the usual play-by-play of the past week that you may have grown accustomed to. It's something a little more thought-provoking (perhaps) to spice things up a bit.

As I sit here and think about this past week and the events that have transpired, I'm finding it hard to come up with anything extraordinary to write about. It was a week filled with the usual: teaching for Brandon; laundry, cooking and cleaning for Stacy; tutoring; Skype calls with friends and family; walks and bus rides around town; and church service in Spanish. In some ways, though, that's a comforting feeling. For me, a week passing without any out-of-the-ordinary events signals that we are adjusting to our new circumstances and Asuncion is becoming home.

One thing I have become acutely aware of, though, is how protective (some) people are of their churches. Coming into a Christian school with a staff of believers and a student population of missionary kids (well, half of the students anyway), I expected to be bombarded with invitations to various churches. It would not have been surprising to me at all if there was a rotation of some sort with parents and teachers signing up to take us newbies to a different church every Sunday for the first few weeks (or months). I thought we would have to sort through all of the invites, kindly declining repeat visits for quite some time. I was taken aback, then, when we were met with exactly the opposite: not a single unsolicited invitation. We have had to seek out services and invite ourselves to join others at their churches.

Please hear my heart; I don't harbor any ill will towards the school, it's staff, or the parents that "should have" invited us to their church. Rather, I think it's a microcosm of a bigger "problem" within the Church (big C) as a whole. And I think the problem is two-fold. One, we're too comfortable with the status quo in our church home to invite a stranger in to potentially disrupt the equilibrium. And two, we're too insecure about how we've chosen to worship (in terms of music choices and teaching methodologies) to let someone see us; we're not willing to run the risk of judgement - and rejection - based on a stylistic preference.

That said, we have found a church that we have really enjoyed attending the past two weeks. The service is in Spanish so we're scrambling to translate what's being said, but having the songs on PowerPoint slides and a side-by-side Spanish/English Bible is helping tremendously.

My challenge to you (and to myself), now, is to get over yourself and ask people to join you at church. They may disrupt your typical Sunday routine. You may miss out on your usual Sunday morning chat with so-and-so because you're introducing your friend to others. You might sit next to someone new, or go to lunch after church with a different group of people. Your friend may even raise an eyebrow at the music style, teaching modality, or dress code.

But then again, God could be using you to introduce them to their new home. You just never know.