Trying Out a New Church – part 1 – What to Wear and What Bible to Read

I mentioned a few weeks ago about how the church our family was attending in Idaho went pretty political from the pulpit right before the election. That rubbed “B” and I poorly and so we decided during the Thanksgiving break to take start taking a look at other churches in the area.

So, I spent some time online looking at churches that met a few criteria:

• Bible believing, using, preaching.
• Had opportunities for the kids on Sunday and during the week (for our jr higher at least).
• Had something more than just Sunday service for “B” and myself.
• Didn’t look like a rock concert was happening every Sunday.
• Wasn’t too far from our house – to hopefully be able to build some kind of community.

Those were the big things in initially.

After much looking, reading, and mapping I got it down to about 7 churches, then “B” and I went over them and got it down to 4. One of them came as a suggestion from some neighbors of ours. That church was outside our map range so we made it number 4 on the list of churches to try out. Then we talked with the girls about them and we picked the two we were going to try out this month.

This past Sunday we headed to the first one. (I am not going to name churches until we come to a conclusion on where we are going to attend longterm). We got there and the first thing we all noticed was that all the men were wearing suits. We went to drop the kids off at their respective places. I got the drop off our Jr Higher and I noticed that there were quite a few kids in the room (15-20). That was a nice sign. The other thing I noticed, all the boys were in suits, all the girls were in dresses, and the Youth leader was also in a suit. Hmmm.

Well, off to Sunday School for my wife and I. All the men were in suits. All the women were in dresses. And the Bible version used by the teacher was The King James Version (not New King James). Ok, so this guy likes the KJV, to each their own, I thought to myself. The class was ok. The lesson didn’t seem to have a point to learn, it was mostly just the guy talking about how Enoch, Moses Elijah, and Jesus all represented parts of the coming tribulation. But I also found out the guy teaching wasn’t the normal teacher so maybe this was a one off.

Over to service. It was a pretty full sanctuary (my guess was about 400-500). There was a large mix of ages as well. I liked that. There seemed to be quite a few younger couples, middle aged couples and older couples. It wasn’t just a grey hair / no hair group of people. But again pretty much all the males were in suits and all the females were in dresses. I certainly stood out in my button shirt and slacks.

We sang old hymns from the hymnal. I knew all the songs. That was nice. Then the preaching started, and it was straight from the King James Version of the Bible. Again, not a bad thing completely, but it added to the feel that the church was stuck in the 1950’s and had rules that must be followed if you were going to follow God “correctly”. The pastor had a message that he said was going to be about “how to be a Christian” and was like a part 6 I think. Here is the thing, I didn’t get the message. He jumped all over the place in Scripture and the verses he was picking seemed to fit together, but he never tied them together. It was a mess to me.

So, what does it mean to me about the suits, dresses and KJV usage? I think that, looking as an outsider, that the church is grounded in rules they have setup. It appeared like if you didn’t fit into their box of what to wear and what version of the Bible you used then you didn’t fit in. Talking to the girls all the other kids had only KJV Bibles as well. I mean really, talk about making it harder on your kid to figure out what God is trying to tell us by making them read a version that was translated A LONG TIME AGO, and wasn’t even translated that well in places. The clothing thing seems wrong to me as well since it looks to me like they want appearances to look good, and that isn’t what God is about. God is about the heart, not the outward. It is easy to make yourself look good on the outside while you are living a life of sin (just look at the Jewish leaders in the time of Christ, and what He said about them).

Will we go back? Well, most likely not, but I won’t say no until we try out the rest of our list (and then possibly add more to it after that if we hadn’t found one yet).

For now – Strike One