Lately i have been obsessed with church and "fitting in". Over the last 4 and 5 months i have attending so many different expressions of church, house church, community family church, catholic church, a romanian church, a pentecostal, a baptist church....

i've entered these churches a stranger, but seriously seeking a place to call home... a place to be family...

the experiences have been so different.. yet so the same....

i am used to church... i was practically born 2nd pew back, piano side....

yet every time i go to a new church i am surprised how nervous i get... "will they like me? will i know when to sit? when to stand? when to pray? when to open my bible?"

and if I... a veteran church attendee... can feel so nervous, anxious, and down right scared... what must people who have never once stepped in to the alternate universe of Church feel?

a couple experience really stuck out to me..

i went to a Romanian Church... (completely in Romanian, sermon and all). i made the biggest faux pas ... sitting on the "male" side of the church and not the "female" side. i didn't know the sexes sat separetly. I just really wanted to fit in and as i sat there, i actually started crying realizing that i had done church badly when i was just trying to be good...

another one was when I went to a Catholic Church. Never have i wanted to be a part of something more then when this beautiful body of Christ entered into the Eucharist. But i wasn't Catholic... so as everyone entered into this beautiful remembering of Christ, I sat feeling very alone... tears of being an outside teased my intense hunger for fellowship.

that really got me to thinking...

how do i make people feel this way in my expression of church? the depth in which i longed to be in something righteous, something holy, something real... to be a part of something... and its not just me that feels this way... i think loads of people feel this stirring. People are dying to be a part of something... our hearts screams for it but our lips fail to speak the unknown... Church.

its in church, because in Church

we belong,

we have family,

that we experience righteousness, meaning, holiness, Love!!

its in church that we are capable of connecting to the deepest and most important relationship... that with our Savior, our God, our Comforter. I feel so blessed that He has written himself on my heart and on the hearts of all people... and am vowing to make it a point in my life to consider those who have yet to realize that above my needs!

Its hard to break that cycle and mindset of thinking of others before i think of myself... but i think it is vital to being a true expression of what the church is.