ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

My husband says he hates going shopping with me. According to him, the first thing I do is try on an outfit that I really like that looks great on me, to which he says, “So why not buy it?” My response is, “I have to look around more and make sure this is really the best outfit for me. If I buy it now, I might exit the store only to notice an even better outfit in the next store over, and then I’ll have buyer’s remorse!” So I spend several hours visiting other stores and seeing what they have to offer, only to return to the first store and purchase the very first outfit I tried on.

And so it is with my church hunt.

I have decided to make DeerGrove Covenant Church in Palatine my new home church. As you’ll recall from my blog post recapping my August 23rd visit to DeerGrove, DGCC is part of the Evangelical Covenant Church denomination and it was the first church I visited when I moved to this area.

There are many things which have led me to conclude that DGCC is the right choice for me, but I feel like today’s visit with my husband and daughter sealed the deal. Harley (my 3 year-old daughter) visited DGCC with me last week as well, and both weeks her reaction has been the same: she absolutely loves the nursery program there. Thanks to her disorder she isn’t always the easiest child to manage, but the workers at DGCC are good with her and they take care of the children with cheerful hearts. After the service today, we all took a trip out to the building which is being renovated as a new home for the congregation and enjoyed the tour. We look forward to helping the church with getting the new building ready in any way we can.

I’m so grateful to my husband Paul for being a willing part of this process. I had him visitChurch of the Redeemer as well as DGCC, and he was impressed with both congregations and approved of them both as potential church homes, but he agreed with me that DGCC seems like the best fit for us. He took his invitation to be involved in this seriously and never used the opportunity to pressure me into just going to the Mormon church or anything. If there are any interfaith couples out there reading this, I hope you’ll consider involving your spouses in your search for a church home, and I hope you’ll take the invitation seriously if your spouse ever makes it.

I’m grateful to all of the churches I visited for having me as an investigator and a guest. I feel pretty strongly that the other three churches I blogged about all could have made great church homes for me. They’ll all be receiving detailed thank-you cards from me explaining my decision so that they don’t wonder what happened to me or worry that they offended me in some way. They didn’t.

I’m also grateful to those pastors who visited the Trinity campus, corresponded with me in e-mail, and answered in-depth questions for me about their churches. They’ll be receiving thank-you cards from me as well, and I hope they continue to reach out to TEDS students in the future.

My last thank-you goes out to Christians for Biblical Equality for its list of egalitarian denominations and the Evangelical Covenant Church for maintaining a list of Covenant churches pastored by women on its Web site. Without those two things, I may never have found DGCC.

In closing, I’d like to go back to my opening clothes shopping metaphor. There’s something my husband does not quite understand about my shopping process. He sees it as a bit of a waste to take time trying on other outfits when I like the first one so much. From my perspective though, trying on other outfits and realizing they don’t fit me as well increases my confidence that the investment I’m making in the first outfit is a good one. I never have to wonder whether I would have found something better had I just kept looking.

That’s how I feel about the way my church hunt has played out. I could have called off the search after my initial visit to DeerGrove, and I don’t doubt I would have been happy with my find, but I also would have spent the next two years wondering if there might have been something else for me out there. Now I’m certain that this is the place for me, and I couldn’t be happier about my decision.

PS — Thanks also to my blog readers for giving me feedback on my church hunt, both here and on my private blog. Your advice was invaluable. Thanks for being there for me.