When Is Church Too Much?

Join me over at The Glorious Table today for a little chat on when and how church can become too much–and how it’s okay to feel that it is too much.

The church is a wonderful thing. Messy sometimes, yes. Comprised of broken people, yes. Politically confounding, yes. Globally fragmented, certainly. But the older I get, the more deeply I realize that I don’t want to live a life outside the body of Christ. As a transient adult (I’ve lived in six different cities since my mid-twenties), finding a new church every time I’ve moved has felt like a gargantuan undertaking. But I always press on because I know what a difference it makes in my life, having a church home.

It took us two years to find a church in Memphis, and even now I avoid discussions of membership and church doctrine because–well, I’m just not ready. Anyway, the people are what really matters to me. My church is overflowing with opportunities for community and fellowship, opportunities to study God’s Word together and to simply share life. And meals. The Baptists are really good at sitting down together over food.

Last winter my husband spent four months working overseas, in Kenya. With family seven hundred or more miles away, I was lonely, but the church drew us close, quickly becoming my support system. We went to church and church-related activities several times a week. Sunday school. Church. Sunday night “life group” with a gaggle of other families, Wednesday night church supper and midweek service. Wherever and whenever we showed up, people embraced me, fed and snuggled my kids, offered me the opportunity to take a breath. I needed that much involvement–I needed church three times a week.

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