Finally Finding a Church to Call Home

Eventually we will share our entire journey of all the different churches we visited, the one we worked at, and the seemingly never ending journey to finally find where we are supposed to be. However, that won't be this post. We wanted to give an account of just the last few years to encourage others who might be in the same boat of trying to find a local church family.

If you've ever been on the hunt for finding a church or maybe you've been "church hopping" your entire life, you know how taxing and draining the search can become. Previous experiences, hurtful situations, and numerous other factors make it seem almost impossible to find a church that meets everything you're looking for. When we started fostering almost four years ago we were attending a non-denominational church not far from our home. We knew a lot of the great people there from school or other churches when we were younger. Our family fit in well and the kids got along very well. The pastor had a very shepherding heart and took care of the members of the church in many ways. Our lives literally turned upside down when we started fostering. We both knew it was something God had called us to do, but there was no amount of training or books to read that could have prepared us for all the different challenges. All of our friends and family were so encouraging before we started fostering and assured us on how supportive and helpful they would be. Unfortunately, when things got difficult we only had a handful of people that consistently offered us help. Consistently it seemed in our marriage our circle of friends was getting smaller and smaller as the year went on. When we started fostering it seemed, at times, it was the smallest it had ever been.

We received our first foster child when she was only a few days old. She had been taken into custody due to positive methamphetamines found in both the mother and father's system. Dealing with a new born is tough on it's own, dealing with a newborn having drug withdrawals is on a whole different level. By the grace of God her parents were the exception, grandma got custody of our foster daughter and the parents cleaned themselves up. They are still to this day thriving as a family and we stay in communication with them, which is really amazing.

After attending the non-denominational church around a year we knew this wasn't the place for us. In fact we ignored obvious doctrinal and theological problems within the church simply because we loved the people so much. On top of us leaving the church, our very good friends were attending with us as well. This was a big deal since they had not routinely been involved in a church for quite some time. Despite all these factors we knew the Biblical truth must be priority for our family's local church commitment. Surprisingly, it's a difficult thing to find a church that preaches expositional in Oklahoma even though it's located in the Bible belt.

Brent's mother and step dad were attending a Reformed Presbyterian church right up the road from where we lived. Our family decided to give it a try after taking a couple months off from our previous church (which we wouldn't recommend). The church was wonderfully very small. The preaching is expositional, the preacher is a wonderful man and the people were friendly. We attended there for a little over a year and deeply enjoyed it but we absolutely knew it wasn't where we weren't meant to be. We weren't miserable by any means but even though we were fostering, we wanted somewhere to foster us!

Finally we stumbled upon an episode of "Ask Pastor John" that dealt with this very issue of finding a church.

In this episode John Piper explained a lot of great points. In his area he was curious which churches around him taught the Doctrines of Grace. He googled his area and bingo he got a list. That's exactly what we did. That's when we stumbled upon our current church Grace Life Church Pryor.

We looked over the church's statement of faith and watched a couple recorded services just to get a general feel of the church. I filled out a form on the website within a couple hours got a phone call from the senior pastor. We had a great conversation and he was more than willing to answer every little question I had. The next weekend we mustered up the courage to give this church a try. The welcoming (not just the door greeters) within the church was overwhelming. A genuine sense of hospitality just flooded from these people. Worship wasn't over the top but well sang, planned out and doctrinally rich. The preaching was the first time we, as a family, got to listen to verse by verse expositional preaching focusing simply on what God's Word is saying. From the greeting, childcare, worship and the preaching of the Word all had one central theme...Christ. We were sold and God has opened up a whole new level of church commitment and fellowship of believers we've never experience in our live. This is the whole mission of this blog. To share what God has done to our family through a dedicated commitment to a local Biblical church.

God really has an amazing way of working things in our lives. We used to live and work at a church in Pryor over ten years ago. When we left that church and decided to move we swore we would never be back, yet here we are. It only took a couple services for us to pursue official membership. It wasn't anything extravagant that coerced us to join, it was the simple focus of God's Word.

I say all this to encourage anyone who is currently on the hunt and things are feeling desperate. Don't go to a church just because that's where all your friends and family go. Don't go there simply because of how their worship service is structure or you find the preaching gives you an emotional boost. Keep praying for God to guide you to the right church that is focused on preaching the Word of God.

Proverbs 19:21 (LSB)

Many thoughts are in a man’s heart, But it is the counsel of Yahweh that will stand.