meeting with the pastor

Joel and I, though not entirely willingly, have kinda-sorta decided that we need to find a church. In the process of looking, we kinda-sorta have found one. Joel is very happy and ready to settle in.

Me, not so much.

It's not that it's not a great church - we already know a good chunk of people there. It's not that I don't love their mission. It's just that I'm not totally sold on the whole idea of a traditional "church". I believe in the "C"hurch with my whole heart. I believe in the Kingdom of God with everything in me. I believe that I'm called to live both of those things out.

I'm just totally unsure of the way we do it in our current American culture.

But the problem is, I don't have a better answer. I know that both Joel and I are encouraged to love more when we go to this place called church. I know that I'm forced to reflect on my image of God when I'm with other people.

But I have questions - lots of them. And often times at traditional churches, they only seem to have answers - and I don't feel like my questions are satisfied by those answers.

I won't tell you what was being talked about at church yesterday, but it was a hard topic. But, as most pastors would do, ours broke it down into very simple terms. After he was finished, the girl in front of me took a big deep breath, and did a fist pump while she mumbled to her neighbor "YES". I think she meant that she felt satisfied - that this question that had bothered her was finally answered.

I did not have the same wave of relief, and I definitely did no fist pumping.

See, my problem is that I don't think we are meant to have the answers - at least not all of them. I didn't agree with the answers that were given, but I didn't have better ones. I think we, as Christians, HATE being uncomfortable. We do everything in our power to make sense of things that don't make sense. We want to be able to hold it in our hands, in our minds, and in our hearts, so that if someone asks us a question, we have a quick and swift response.

I'm uncomfortable with this.

And I'm okay with that.

But the pastor, who we are having coffee with today, might not be. We'll see if I even have the guts to lay it out there.