On belonging

David and I have decided to officially join the church across the street. Depending on your background, this is either a huge commitment or an “oh, that’s nice” (I’ve done both types).

Our pastor has been very clear that our involvement in the church isn’t affected by our membership status. 

But we’re joining anyway.

We didn’t join the previous church we attended because we knew we were probably only going to be there for a few months. We would have happily stayed there for much longer if one of us had gotten a full-time job in Lafayette, but that didn’t happen. Still, we felt like we fit there. There was a sizable minority of people very like us—lots of academics, many of them in the “young adult” range (whatever that means), lots of people with similar life experiences and political views who had similar questions about faith and God, several of them also with babies around the same age as B. We made friends quickly, and if we had been able to stay longer, those friendships would have probably deepened easily. We had previously come from a church where, although we were members and had attended for almost ten years, we never felt quite like we belonged to the larger congregation (a feeling that grew progressively stronger the longer we were there and the more our beliefs evolved over those ten years, though we had a small group that we loved who I still miss), so fitting in like this was blissful.

When we knew we were moving, I scoured the internet for churches in the area like the one we had newly fallen in love with, but the closest church in that denomination was fifteen minutes away. This may not sound like much, but it’s become important to David and I that we worship in our community. When I was young, although my church was only five minutes away, I rarely went to school with any of the other kids there, first because they were in a different school district, then later because I was homeschooled or at a private school. It was hard to make connections with other kids when I only saw them in Sunday School or youth group while they saw each other every day. Much later, when David and I lived in Lafayette, we realized what a joy it was to be able to walk or ride bikes to church and to see friends from church around town every day (this is true, by the way, for both churches that we attended while we lived there).  

But then we bought a house here, and lo and behold, there was a church right across the street, in a denomination that I had only recently heard of but that I knew was “in full communion with” our second church in Lafayette. Tentatively, I began to investigate the website. My dissertation chair would call it “workmanlike”—it’s not pretty, but it gets the job done. I learned that there’s a quilting circle that’s been making quilts nonstop for something like six hundred years. The church’s history includes the date when they started having services in English instead of Swedish, and notes that many of the current members are descendants of the church’s founding families. The book club is reading something by Bill O’Reilly.

This all translates, by the way, to a congregation much older than us that is likely very very very set in their ways.

But I saw a picture of the pastor, who had only come to the church a few months earlier, and I thought, “Yeah. I’d like her to be my pastor.” So we decided to check it out.

I was right about the demographic. There were no babies except B. The pews were sparsely populated—my dad has taught Sunday School classes with a better turnout—and my little introverted self cringed at how INCREDIBLY CONSPICUOUS we were. It didn’t help that my kids are not at all in any way quiet. The two of them during prayer time made more noise than the entire congregation did during the singing (of songs I had never heard). Also they were having some kind of special Thing that day that involved everyone getting up and standing in a circle and holding candles. Eep.

Fortunately, the special Thing involved cake afterwards. And we talked to enough friendly people that I felt like we ought to give it another try the next week.

And then the next week.

And the next week.

And while we still didn’t “fit in,” I started to feel that maybe this was a place where we could belong. It’s an old church, and the village is older still, and the web of relationships is deep and intricate (there may or may not have been Game of Thrones jokes during a Sunday morning reading group) and incomprehensible to me, but what I can understand are the welcoming gestures inviting us to tie our own threads to the web wherever we can. Our next door neighbors, who Queen Mab adores (when she sees them pull in the driveway, she tries to sprint out the door to go greet them, and when they’re doing yardwork will follow them all over trying to help) are members, and the pastor are her family are in the parsonage next to the church. I see other members of the church at the library or at the cantina. Our house was built by early members of the church, and every family that has lived there since has attended there—we learn more about the house from talking to the neighbors and other church members than we ever learned from the realtor (who nevertheless is still the cousin of somebody we met the first Sunday we visited). Sunday School is the highlight of Mab’s week, and she will take off through the pews when it’s time to pass the peace to hug her friends and teacher and shake hands with all the grandparently types. Even B will try to climb the back of our pew to “shake-a hands!” with the people behind us.

Since I doubt we’ll ever “fit in,” in the sense of not being an obvious outlier, I’ve decided to just own my out-of-syncness. “I know you’ve introduced yourself to me and this is super awkward but I really can’t remember your name!” “Sorry, I don’t know how to pray like a Lutheran!” Years of attending conferences have trained me how to temporarily disable my introversion and actually talk to people for a little bit. It’s exhausting but rewarding. We joined the aforementioned reading group during Lent and went to all the midweek Lenten suppers, and now I’m on the education committee. We figure that if we’re going to belong, we’re going to have to make it happen. We’re not going to fall into community the way we did in the days when we made friends by sitting next to them in class and snarking our way through seminars.

And while this is an old church, and the pews are still less than half full most Sundays, and there are only three kids in Mab’s Sunday School class (and one of them is the pastor’s daughter), I believe in it.

They’re not one of the “cool” churches scrabbling for relevancy. Our pastor, who’s only a little less new to the area than us, is the first person to mark my forehead with ashes. The congregation has recently come through some major upheavals, and yet they’re still here, and they’re open to change. Because they know that to stagnate would be to close the church forever. Maybe if we had come here a couple years ago, it would have been different. I know there are still some people who are deeply unhappy with the new pastor and the new order of things who are currently keeping their heads down. A couple years ago they would likely have been much more influential, and maybe it would have made it harder for us to find a place here.

But we came now. That we were brought here at this particular time probably means something.

Most of them are not like us. Or we’re not like them. We’re not from the area, and we’re a couple generations younger than most of them. But they seem happy to have us, and I’m happy to be here.

So we’re joining. Because even if we don’t fit in, and even if it doesn’t affect the things we can or can’t do (or maybe because we don’t automatically fit in and it doesn’t affect our involvement), we want to say to the church, “Yes, we will stay and work with you and belong with you.” We don’t have to make the official commitment to be part of the church, but we’re doing it anyway.

(The day after we told the pastor we would join, I read this, which inspired this post)