Time to Move On...

As I was getting ready to go to work this afternoon, I found myself fantasizing about getting fired. The last time I did this, I actually did get fired. (Through no fault of my own.) It was the best thing that could have happened to me. I think when someone sees termination as the only way to get out of a job, it is time for a new job. Please pray that I find another job soon, before I get up the nerve to quit without having another job lined up.

Church Hunting

I have been living in Sacramento for nearly three months, and I started looking for a church sometime early in June. I really want to go to church somewhere near where I live, but have so far found that the churches downtown are not going to work out. They are apparently either dead or crazy in some way or another.

What I found out very quickly, and what I find very interesting is the prevalence of the emergent movement among the more conservative churches in the area. I was vaguely aware of the emergent church when I lived in Southern California, but I never really paid it much attention and never really investigated what it is all about. Yikes! I read A Generous Orthodoxy this last winter and I am now extremely concerned about the popularity of this movement. Almost everywhere I go up here, people are jumping on the emergent bandwagon. I think I will say more about the emergent church another time.

Anyway, after several encounters with emergent and dead churches, (I should say that I was seriously considering getting involved at one church and subverting the emergent movement), I think I have found a better option.

I have attended a church called Restoration Life for about three weeks now, and I really enjoy it. It is a year-old church plant that seems to have at least quadrupled in size since it started, which is encouraging. The teaching is not at all what I am used to, but there is an emphasis on community that I like and I enjoy the people and the desire to seek God. It is a very different experience for me. I can already sense a lot more freedom than I am used to, especially in the service, it is not at all the intellectual environment I have experienced over the last seven years, it doesn't have the resources of a large church, or of an established church that I am used to, but I think all of this is probably good for me right now. I think I am going to keep going and see if this is the place I will call home for the forseeable future.

Church hunting has also made me appreciate anew what I gave up when I left Long Beach. I miss being a part of that community, I miss the teaching (though I have started listening to the sermons on the internet), and I miss being a part of what God is doing there. Grace wasn't perfect, but there is no such thing as a perfect church, and I can truly appreciate being a part of a group of people that was allowing God do move among them and change them. One of the blessings of going back to Long Beach to visit in June was that I was able to see how much had changed in the few months I had been gone, and to see how things we had been praying for for a long time had been granted. I think I was able to see that more clearly because I had been gone than I ever would have if I had been there.

That is all for now.

Sidenote: Does anyone else find the concept of a postmodern Presbyterian church strange?

I have the internet!

Yes, after two months, I am now able to communicate with the world outside again. Who knew not having the internet would be so isolating? Now I can start posting more regularly.