You'll Know a Church Home When You Find It!

In less than three minutes I can provide you with the ten top things to look for when choosing child care, adult day care, a nursing home, or a school. So I was struck by the way I fumbled for words when a young couple I met with for pre-marital counseling asked, “How do we choose a church?” Given my day-job, shouldn’t that be a real softball question? How would you respond?

Now I know what Martin Luther - the founder of Protestantism - might have said, “Go where the Word of God (Gospel) is preached boldly and the sacraments are administered rightly.” But given the emotional territory we’d been wandering in for many hours over several weeks, those words seemed to say less than what this couple needed to hear - and maybe too much like what a professional minister ought to say. I “backed-in” to a more authentic response.

I began by saying how I wouldn’t choose a church:
· location is unimportant
· worship format is only a marginal concern
· music style is a so-so
· preaching is not the highest priority
· “brand name” / denomination is peripheral
· programming for my kids is totally irrelevant.
This last piece opened my eyes and my heart.

For me, feeling that the people gathered for worship share a sense of being Spirit-led and Spirit-fed, makes a congregation worthy of deeper exploration. I’d explore by attending worship for at least six weeks in a row. Then I’d begin to sense whether or not those who claim membership in this particular embodiment of what God has done, and is doing in Christ, are:
· traveling a personal faith journey together
· seeking to hear and respond to the voice of God
· attending to what God is here after, not the hereafter
· making bold claims about God’s work to save the world, not their work to save souls
· judging issues, not people
· asking God, and each other, for help to walk in ways that bring life and faith together.

In short, I want to be part of a transforming community. A mysterious gathering of folk God sets me within to: help me be the image of God, despite the fact that I keep missing the mark (sinning); trust that God chooses to love me; believe God longs to use me to express what life and world under the holy rule of God can be like for all God’s people.

A transforming community links my story to the story of the Bible’s God. That story doesn’t end exile, stop suffering, pooh-pooh real pain, or shrink from the struggle against injustice. It promises that through it all, this God is God-with-us, this God-for-us.

A transforming community doesn’t compete with the world’s agencies to make a better world. Rather, it gives hands-on testimony to God’s presence, creating and saving world moment-by-moment, heart-by-heart.

A transforming community doesn’t lust after worldly power. It joins God’s power - which can even overcome death - by breaking self open and pouring self out, in the manner of Jesus and his cross.

A transforming community is less interested in doing the business of God’s judging and more interested in witnessing to the godly enterprise of compassion - that wombing expression of God’s own heart that makes a way out of no-way, by word and water.

A transforming community doesn’t put demands on me. It liberates me from all that the world says I must do to make my own meaning. And frees me to receive and express God’s commitment to me in bread and wine, by what God lets me do in the world.

A transforming community challenges me to change, holds me accountable when I won’t, forgives me when I don’t.

We’ve saved a place for you to renew your identity in a transforming community at worship this Sunday morning at 10:45 A.M. Come as you are. Leave differently. Three minutes gets you a decent soft-boiled egg. Sharin’ Plenty Good News, living life in the Spirit, takes a bit more time and lots more grace!

Pastor Jeff Iacobazzi