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Finding right church true test of faith |
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Written by Sandra Machuca
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Wednesday, 12 April 2006 |
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Where do you go to church? What’s your denomination?
When I hear or see these questions, all I can say is: I don’t know.
We seem to take for granted the things we have. It isn’t until we don’t have it anymore that we think about it.
The thing I miss in my spiritual life is the ability to say that I know where my spiritual home is — the place where I can find courage and understanding. And intervention, should I ever need it. 
I’ve been looking for a place to worship, praise and thank God for everything H e has done in my life. I’ve searched for the past couple of years and am still nowhere close to finding a place where I think I belong.
Because of this, I think I have turned into a “Bunny Believer” — a person who hops from church to church — never leaving a foundation to build my faith on or making a commitment to the church. I want to be with others who believe what I do, for strength and encouragement.
I like to think that I’m only 1/3 of the problem. It isn’t that I stopped going to my childhood church, it’s just that it isn’t there anymore.
Our church was a Pentecostal church, though I didn’t know then what that meant, nor do I have a clearer picture about what (denomination) is best for me even now.
Denominations! That’s another other third of the problem.
Which one to choose? Who is right? Who’s wrong?
So many details in religion have left me overwhelmed. I didn’t realize how hard it was to choose. If you choose wrong, do you go to hell? With the rest of eternity at stake, I couldn’t just pick a random place and go, not knowing what I was being guided to believe.
And the last third of my problem?
Tell me who on earth doesn’t have an opinion about what they think is right about what church leads you to Jesus and heaven. Everyone thinks they’re right! People die and kill others because they think they’re right. So, maybe it’s just the journalist in me that makes me suspicious of anyone that tries to sway me one way or the other.
So, I have to find out for myself what I need to know.
I started researching exactly what each denomination believed and why, and I visited churches like you wouldn’t believe. I just wanted to figure it out on my own.
I still went to church, and I enjoyed every church I went to. I met some great people, too.
The first church I went to was the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I attended services with my best friend from college. I enjoyed learning about prophecy and how to make sense of church. My first real understanding of the New Testament came from them.
But, eventually, I started feeling uncomfortable about the church and it’s teachings, specifically the teachings by a woman named Ellen G. White. She was a prophet in the 1800s who Seventh-day Adventists believed God had given the gift of foresight regarding the United States and the role the country would take in the end times.
More than anything it scared me, and I decided to move on to another church and keep searching for my own answers.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for a church I’m comfortable in, just one where I belong. There is a difference.
Next came a Methodist church that seemed OK to me.
None of the teachings strayed from the Bible. (Which was one of my criteria — my church has to be Bible-based). The Methodist church wasn’t held in a church, but rather in a school gymnasium. And no matter how much I sang and tried to be in a “churchy” mood, I just couldn’t do it. I only went to that church a couple of weeks and called it quits.
Maybe I didn’t give them a chance, but I just didn’t feel I belonged there.
Along my way I met my boyfriend, who is a devout Catholic.
I didn’t know much about Catholicism, other than what I learned in World History in high school and the lessons the Seventh-Day Adventists taught. (FYI: Seventh-day Adventists teach that the office of the papacy has a big role in the end times. And it’s not good.)
So I knew about the past corruption of the church and never gave Catholicism a chance because of that. But I love my honey and decided that if I was going to be in his life, and he in mine, I needed to know what this religion was about.
I attended church with him and his family, and I found it to be a beautiful service.
But I started feeling uncomfortable with some of the teachings of his church. I was brought up Protestant, and I started worrying that his church just couldn’t be mine. Every time I went, I would find something I just couldn’t agree with. I lasted a few months before I couldn’t keep going anymore. I explained to my boyfriend that I just didn’t feel I belonged there.
He was understanding but disappointed. He wants us to be the same in God. I want that too, but I’m not sure how that is going to work out. Since he is so sure in his faith and his church, it makes me want the same. And because I know I can’t be Catholic, I want to have that foundation in my own place.
I realized while writing this that I don’t need to understand everything. I could learn and study and know everything about every single denomination there is out there, and I may still not know where I belong.
But instead of relying on my own understanding, I’m going to pray that God leads me to the right place and pray that I am able to notice it when I go there.
I’ll still go to church with my boyfriend (sometimes) and I’ll probably be a “Bunny Believer” for a while longer, but it won’t be a hopeless search.
I’ll go where HE leads me and trust in Him alone.
Sandra Machuca, Web editor at NEXTnc, has been a bunny believer for the last three years. She prays to find her place soon. To read more about churches click here. Read Donovan Henderson's column about being a preacher's kid.
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