Church Hunting attempt #2

After David's play ended, we could go back to trying churches.  I will be honest and admit that I do have two ulterior motives:

  #1- if we find a church in Rockford rather than Byron or Stillman, then I can do my CVS and Walgreens shopping after church, since we'll already be in town.  Otherwise, I get the eyeroll and a comment about if I saved enough money to pay for the gallon of gas I used to drive into town and back.

#2- if church gets out by a certain time, we can still make the breakfast buffet at Golden Corral.  They have really yummy biscuits and gravy, and the hashbrowns aren't bad.  Not great, but with gravy on 'em, they're ok.  But breakfast ends at 11, so church starting at 10 wouldn't be my ideal:)

Ok, next church.  I'd watched one sermon online and I was pretty concerned that it was a baby church.  Actually, I don't think I made it through the whole sermon because it was too baby to even listen to all the way through.  But maybe I just picked a bad week, so we'll try it.  Big- check.  It's sorta like Calvary in Spokane- they renovated an old shopping mall.  Good music- check.  A bit more concert-y than I'd prefer, but good.  The kids absolutely LOVED the kids program!  Hope's class was awesome- there's a cafe part where they can sit in half-round booths and order hot chocolate or pop and little snacks.  She told me more times than I can count how much she hoped we liked that church because she really wanted to go there.  However, when I asked if there was anyone there she knew, she said yes.  One of them is a boy who rides her bus.  One of the boys she complains about because he swears all the time, and the bus driver has talked to him and he still does it.  The swearing bothers Hope enough that she asked me if I could drive her to school every day.  We talked about being in the world but not of the world- there's always going to be stuff like that to deal with.  But he goes to church and still has a mouth that even the bus driver doesn't approve of?  I don't know how much that makes me want her involved in the youth group.

While we were dropping off the kids, we saw one of David's old coworkers.  Said coworker was a good friend of another coworker that I was friends with.  Make sense?  Said coworker's morals never impressed me.  Three kids by at least two people; got pregnant with #4 right about the time we left by someone else. Maybe it was only three kids total. My memory may not be right about that one. Dated, never married, lived together.  Maybe I'm judgemental.  Not impressive morals.  Maybe she's changed a bunch in the past five years.  I don't know how much  you can judge a church by the people who go there.  So far, this one isn't faring well.

So, sermon was a pre-taped series from another church.  Had I known that, we wouldn't have chosen that week to attend.  Good enough sermon, although I did have issues with a few comments the pastor made.  But again, he's not in any way related to this church.  The sermon was part of a series on dating and marriage; this week was a biblical view of women.  The main verse was Eph 5:25- the verse after 'wives submit to your husband'.  Now I had figured out in high school that verse 25 was the great qualifier to verse 24.  That shouldn't be revolutionary.  I will admit that he focused more on that God sees all women through this verse, so men should treat all women as Christ treated the church.  That, I guess, was somewhat new for me to think about.  But when someone says "that wasn't at all baby christian; that was sound, good teaching"- if I had it figured out by the time I was 17, I don't think it's all that deep.

We'll definitely go back; I want to hear the actual pastor and see if they have other worship teams.  But I still think if I want any sort of real teaching, I may need to look elsewhere.