Thursday, December 02, 2004

Parish the Thought

Next week I'll meet with the assignment folks to plan my next move. We won't leave until June, but it's hard not to start thinking about it.

The most difficult part of a move has become finding a church home. As my understanding of Scripture improves, the effort to find the right church toughens exponentially. Consider this chart of our assignment history:

Year----Loc.---Churches Visited-----Time to Decide
1993----TX--------1-------------------0 mos
1997----NJ--------2-------------------1 mo
1999----IL--------2-------------------1 yr
2003----GA-------7-------------------6 mos
2004----OH-------5-------------------7 mos

Are we doomed to repeat this cycle with each move? I hope not. Sometimes we long for the parish system where you take what you get. But when the local churches are nearly dead and another one 30 minutes away is a great fit, we know where we'll be.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heritage Presbyterian in Oklahoma City has several Tinker AFB families. And I have a feeling you'd like that church (weekly communion with WINE!) quite a lot. Just a thought.

Anonymous

Tim said...

I would like that more than any other place...there's a particular Pastor there that we love and miss.

Valerie (Kyriosity) said...

I dunno which particular pastor you miss, but Chuck and Chris Garriott are brothers of my soon-to-be-former pastor Craig Garriott. Which just goes to prove my theory that there are never more than two degrees of separation in the Reformed world.

Valerie (Kyriosity) said...

Tim, how far in advance will you know where you're going? Seems like a lot of research could be done ahead of time via websites, phone calls and networking. When you know where you're going, blog about the location and about your requirements for a church. I bet someone would know someone who knows enough to help you at least rule out some of the possibilities.

Tim said...

Valerie:

Thanks, I'll do that. Getting the blogosphere involved could provide some unique insights.

In the past moves the internet and phone calls have been helpful, but it has taken us several visits with a church before we feel like we know it well enough to stay or keep looking.

And our judgment is usually clouded for a while after we move. It's really hard to leave a church you love.