the church saga

Before we moved back to Virginia, I posted my lament about leaving our beloved Portland Mennonite Church and my lack of enthusiasm for trying to find a new church home. It’s been just about as awful as I expected.

We started off going to my parents church, just until we had settled in. I grew up in that church but it hasn’t been my church home for a while. We tried out the Mennonite church about 30 minutes from us, the closest one in the MCUSA in our area. We figured that was pretty much the most likely place we would end up. Then weird things started happening. We met a few people who were very much a part of the military establishment, one person who was enlisted. Then someone at church made a comment about how she thought Mennonites needed to rethink their position on war. We tried to talk about this with the pastor, but he’s part time and lives almost 2 hours from the church. Something has come up every time we’ve tried to meet.

The other problem, something we haven’t had to deal with before, is that the church isn’t local. It’s membership covers over 100 miles and almost no one lives near us. With the baby not liking being in the car, this makes connecting with others difficult. Church becomes just something you do on Sunday. And while we know that anyone can go to whatever church they want, warmongering or not, we don’t feel like we can even enter into conversations about militarism and faith if we only interface during a Sunday service.

So we kept looking. The next Anabaptist option is the Manassas Church of the Brethren. It’s right down the road from us, and while we don’t feel that connected to the service, it’s close by and in the peace church tradition. We pull up on Sunday into the parking lot inbetween two cars: the first has a license plate holder reading “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” the other “My son is in the United States Army.” Huh? While we have no idea where the church qua church is on the issue of pacifism, it’s pretty clear a few of it’s members are confused about the Anabaptist position on bearing the sword. Once again we’ll be attempting to get in touch with church leadership to sort out what’s going on.

There’s another church in the area that’s part of the Conservative Mennonite Conference. I don’t know much about them except that they are a group of 100 or so churches who formed a new conference after deciding not to join the Amish church. I also know that they don’t allow women to exercise leadership. Now, I don’t want to get into a debate about this. Suffices to say that I can’t be a part of a church that doesn’t recognize and utilize the teaching and preaching gifts of women in the congregation, especially as someone who seems to have these gifts.

The church saga as it is unfolding has been helpful in one respect. It’s helped us figure out what’s important to us. I’ve never church shopped or hopped before. And while I hate it, I now know that I need to be in a church where women can be in leadership (granted, I knew that before). I am beginning to see more and more the gift of having a church that is local and accessible, an even more important factor as I am now part of the stay at home mom set. I think it’s important that we’re in a church where there are a lot of opportunities for interaction and conversation, especially in a church where people are confused about war. We’re not sure how all this will pan out. Regardless, I think we’re both realizing that we may not love our church, for me for the first time in my life. It’s a sad reality but one that I’m hoping to come to terms with, even as we seek to be challenged and to challenge others.