Home – for everyone

The boys were back in the coffee shop on April 16th, 2023, sharing a “church experience” and its overall impact on them. You can hear the podcast here.

To set the stage, it was Easter weekend of 2015, and at the end of the service, attendees were invited to come up front and get baptized, as Jesus did in the book of Matthew chapter 3, verses 13 through 17.

While the baptisms were taking place, there was a powerful simultaneous musical element. The selection covered the Carry Underwood song “Something in the Water.” You can hear the rendition here, and you can read the lyrics here.

In this post, we would like to highlight what we believe wholeheartedly: that there is a place in the family of the God of the Bible - for EVERYONE!

The sad reality is that people and institutions can be “judgey,” unaccepting, and sometimes just cruel. We have also found that that is not always the case.

After a lifetime of negative church experiences, we found places that welcome God-seekers regardless of background or current circumstances (or appearance). There are churches that greet and embrace the scarred – accepting the sinner along with the sin. One does not need to be perfect to engage in intimacy with the creator of all – and a place of worship should never be a barrier to that absolute.

We didn’t stop searching for acceptance – no one should. According to the National Congregational Study Survey, there are an estimated 380,000 churches in the U.S. Surely, there is one for us.

What awaits us on the other side of connection? To answer this question, we barrow the closing lines of “something in the water”:

And now I'm singin' all along to "Amazin' Grace" Can't nobody wipe this smile off my face Got joy in my heart, angels on my side Thinkin' about it, I saw the Lord Gonna look ahead, no turnin' back Live every day, give it all that I have Trusted someone bigger than me Ever since the day that I believed

I am changed

We found that connection to a church is essential to our spiritual growth. And this concept was entirely foreign to us as, for years, we avoided religious buildings like one avoids a room full of positive covid patients. Instead, we declared that we didn’t need the church to have the relationship. Though we still hold that this has merit, we have discovered that being in community of worship is a biblical principle that delivers healthy spiritual stability.

Our own experience has proven to us the importance of spiritual fellowship to the same degree that there is value in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.

So we can go it alone or build community.

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Thoughts and ideas for this blog post were taken and built upon from asweunderstandhim.coffee podcast #4 titled “Something in the Water…” The podcast dropped on 4/16/2023. Click here to hear the podcast.

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

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