How I got to the church I am part of today

I used to go to church regularly as a child, stopped, then started again, then stopped. Then I got married and went to church, didn’t go, went again. It was a learning experience, that’s for sure. I was brought up Episcopalian, which in the words of the great author Garrison Keilor, is catholic light. I got married, and my wife, who was brought up catholic, said that we should go to church again.
Episcopal was out and so was catholic, we decided that it would be best to not go to mine or hers, and find an ours. Our search started at a Lutheran church where the people my wife babysat for went to church. The service was a lot like the Episcopal in the sense that you had stuff to look up, things to say, hymns to sing. The pastor was a phenomenal speaker. He made you feel that he was talking to just you, and the way that he made the sermon wrap around a story was an art. All good things come to an end though, and so did that job and when the job went away, we stopped going to church there.
Presbyterian was the next one we tried. We had some neighbors who went there, so we went with them to church. I found out a lot about that religion and I also found out that I hate politics too. They have elders there and they vote on EVERYTHING. We stopped going there because our neighbor friends moved to a new house and we just stopped talking. Its amazing how the only thing that keeps some people together as friends is the fact that we have to deal with each other.
Next on the list, Methodist. We ended up there because we moved to a small town that my grandparents lived in, and that’s where they went. If you LOVE to sing, then this is the one for you. I sing in the shower or in the car but in public, I get a little timid. We stopped going there because we moved back to our hometown and then we did not go to any church, not for a long time.
When kids are in school, they make friendships that reach out into weekend activities, and my kid went to school with a girl who invited him to her church. It was just a non denominational church. I went with my wife and lets just say that it wasn’t for us. We both came from structured churches with a lot of kneeling standing and sitting. This church was a lot of rock music and no reading out of a psalm book or bible. We didn’t even start going there, but my kids went till the youth pastor did not accommodate for my youngest one. I said all or none, you can’t split up my boys.
Which then leads us to the last one, the one we are at now. It is also a non denominational christian church, but the thing that sets this one apart from all the others is this; we know no one here. We did not come to this church at the asking of a friend or relative. We weren’t sucked in by a family of someone my wife babysat for, and my kid didn’t have a school mate try to get him to go to their church.
This decision was 100 percent made by us with no input from anyone. it’s the best way to be active in the kids life and start the process of getting to know god again. Its been a long road, a lifetime almost, but now we are home.