I believe a pastor needs to move on from the local church you served, so staying at our old church was not an option. But I came to realize that going to a variety of churches was not enough. You need to have your own church. You need to be part of a body of believers. The local church is a gift from the Lord and you need to take advantage of this blessing from Him. 

For our whole married life I was employed in a church until May 2023. Thus there was never a discussion about which church we would attend. Only the occasional decision about where to visit while on vacation. This last year has been a challenge transitioning from local ministry to the seminary. Making this change harder is that as the Director of Church Relations I am preaching or attending different churches many Sunday mornings. When taking this job I did not consider the loss of my local church family to be such a big factor in the coming transition.

At first, I enjoyed being in many different churches each week seeing old friends and making new ones, but as we moved into the Fall of the year, I noticed something was missing. My wife and I talked about how we missed the regular flow of church life in a local congregation. But now came the hard part – we needed to agree on a church to attend. We had never had to choose a church home. There were many good options in our area. We never settled on a church that was right for us, partly because they had to have ministry outside of Sunday mornings. This meant an evening service and Wednesday night activities. We entered the new year a bit lost still needing a church home but struggling to find one that met our specific needs.

Then one Friday afternoon in February, I saw a friend of my wife’s at the local Panera Bread, after talking for a little while the subject of church came up. I told her about our struggles in finding a church and she invited us to her church. This was the answer to our need. They had a Sunday night Worship service and Wednesday night programs. What a blessing it has been to reconnect with a local congregation in the last few months.

Why did we realize we needed a church home?

First, we needed to be fed the Word of God.

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