Looking for a Church - again, but different this time

okay, I'm ready to look for a church home.

Joe is willing too. I told him I'm going to try blogging about it- and he agreed to do it too!  Although he says he's not as wordy or 'thinky' as I am- he's got great wisdom, a different perspective, and it would be a different way for us to  evaluate various church experiences.

We left "the Grove" last April and since there was no way I felt like church shopping, I just planted a church. Which is definitely not easier, but this shows how much I didn't want to go through the process of selecting, visiting and potentially settling into a new church.

We've done this before- maybe we can write about some of those previous choices, but this time it feels different. Because we are different. Significantly different. We are older, much less conservative, and I am not looking to get into a leadership position. . . and there are probably several more ways we've changed.

So this time we are shopping in a whole new section of the store. Maybe another mall altogether. We will be investigating mainline, liberal churches!

First stop is  the United Methodist Church. We are going to a relatively new church plant called "Jacob's Well" in Chandler. 

I have been considering checking out this particular church for quite a while, and have 'sent' 2 other families there, both of whom LOVE it and are now regulars. They sent out a Facebook invitation to this new sermon series, In which they will have guests from other religions talk about their faiths. I said we'd come, and they made happy comments. So we will be greeted by a few friendly faces we know.

Here's what I'm expecting: Small, Churchplanty vibe: temporary space, young people, more enthusiasm than professionalism, invitation to coffee with pastor dude, talk about missional living. But this sermon series is really intriguing. It might mess up my plan to check out a different church every other week- because if they do this well and I keep showing up, I will probably learn a bunch of entirely new things, and have a perspective shift as well. 

Adriene Buffington