World, It's Monday.

This means post # 2 is now available to the community.

Unfortunately, this will be a rather short post - I'm in Houston at the moment, going up to Oklahoma as soon as my boyfriend gets ready. However, I can share a little bit about yesterday and talk for a bit.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of going to a different church. I mean, yes, I'm in Houston; therefore, it makes sense that I wasn't at Sunshine. However, this church was different in more than one way - it was a different denomination.
I count myself a "Reformed floater" of sorts. I've gone to Reformed Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, RCA, CRC, even a URC. But I stay basically in the same bubble. When I went to my first college, I went to a non-denominational Free Methodist church (and yes, if that sounds like an oxymoron, it was/is). But, I had a job interview yesterday to work in this church after I graduate, so I decided to go.

I love Texans. The lot of them are welcoming and warm. And I started realizing what it means to be a community of believers from all different backgrounds. This United Methodist Church had a Methodist pastor, but a whole staff of people from different denominations. But they worked together for the common good of the church - and it worked. This church is HUGE. The pastor stays grounded in Methodism and the staff supports him.

When I was being interviewed, the woman interviewing me said, "It was different, wasn't it? The worship was different?"
Not really, actually. All the songs we sang during the music portion of it I've sung in many different Reformed churches. The main difference was the fact that there was a prayer bench up front for those who felt the calling of the Spirit after the sermon - and even at Sunshine, there's always a chance to pray up front with people after the service. It wasn't an "anxious seat" as some of us Reformed folk would think of. It wasn't an altar call. But it was cool that they offered it, making open the opportunity to pray THROUGH the sermon using sermon notes/application points.
The pastor did preach perfectionism - not in the bad sense. He made it VERY well known that we cannot be perfect by ourselves. We cannot reach holiness by our own means. It's impossible for us to be perfect on our own terms. So even on the pastor's points of doctrine that Reformed folk would contend with, there really wasn't contention. The Gospel was preached and it was preached well.

It was community, living and working in diversity. And for the first time, stepping out of the Reformed bubble, I felt safe. I felt like this was a community that had safety nets for first-timers like myself. It relied on the moving of the Holy Spirit and was steeped in prayer.

Long story short: I turned the job down. It didn't turn out to be what they had told me it was going to be, and they wanted me to stay there forever being a Children's Pastor one day. I couldn't make a commitment like that, both for my own good and the good of the church. The right person is out there - it's just not me. But it was good experience, for sure. It was interesting how well the doctrine classes prepared me to answer questions like, "Where do you land on the election/free will scale? And explain." From the look on this woman's face, she had never heard election the way I presented it (which, I'm finding, happens more and more in the world outside of the Reformed bubble.). She was intrigued by the fact that election doesn't mean I don't go out and share the gospel, nor does it mean that I become egotistical about my salvation. It isn't election based on what I did or who I am, because I am a wretched sinner who desperately needs irresistible grace to choose God. Her jaw kind of dropped when I told her that election doesn't make us robots in that we always do the will of God all the time - or that we're puppets in the hands of a master puppeteer.

Always be prepared to give an answer for what you believe - but do all things in love. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am but a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." - 1 Corinthians 13:1
"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free [Reformed or Methodist or Catholic or Pentecostal...]—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many." 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 (bracketed parts mine).