I Love My Church

It's true. I really do love my church. My people. My safe place. My place to be filled and to fill others, to serve and to actively be part of the body of Christ.  A place to both learn from others and to teach what God is teaching me. To be prayed for and to lift up and carry others in prayer. And it's been so good to be back in the service in person the last two weeks, to be back home. I teared up on the drive there last week, and I teared up during worship this week. Life has held so many ups and downs, but my church has always been there to meet me through every one of them. There are pros and cons to being part of a big church versus a small church. Many people can walk in and only see the cons. After serving at my church for seventeen years now, I walk in and only see the pros. So. many. pros. I love everything about being part of a big church. 

Only being back home looks quite a bit different than I could have envisioned just six months ago when the Church unexpectedly left the building. Back home meant God took us back to the main campus where we started out seventeen years ago. 

The campus we had no intention of ever leaving when our local Firewheel campus opened in the spring of 2008, but God made it pretty clear He had plans for us to raise our son there, closer to home. So we did. We left a Life Group and small group that we dearly loved to move to a smaller campus closer to home. And I must say that we all thrived at the Firewheel campus. It had a small church feel with all the big church benefits. We attended the Saturday night service, which gave us a closer relationship with all of the leadership in the church in a more casual setting. David grew close to every leader over him from fourth grade and up, diving in to every youth activity, as well as every mission trip opportunity offered him. Mike served as an usher at Firewheel and attended Man Church pretty consistently at the main campus as long as his schedule allowed, maintaining connections with friends there while encouraging friends from Firewheel to join him. I found my niche teaching women's Bible studies and working closely with the women's ministry. A connection in a women's Bible study led us to a new Saturday night Life Group that literally just wrapped its arms around us and carried us through our entire adoption saga. Being part of such a big church gave us the opportunity to introduce Juan David to his new church and start attending on Saturday evenings online all the way from Bogota', Colombia. So by the time he came home, our church was already familiar to him. He fell in love with Lakepointe Church immediately, grew close to the youth leaders rather quickly, and found his own relationship with Christ through the youth ministry of our church. Eventually he found himself serving as a leader in some capacity, as well. 

We loved being part of the smaller campus and know that the location allowed us to be more involved in weekly activities. But the main campus still held ministries that kept us with our feet in both locations. Man Church, Women's Bible study leader events, Women's Ministry gatherings, Rockwall Christian Writer's Group, Lakepointe Adoption and Foster Care Ministry, ReEngage, mission trips, and youth events. 

Still, we loved our little campus and had no intentions of leaving. We loved attending every Saturday night as a family, where we occupied one of the rows all the way up in the front. We loved our Life Group, and we loved serving there. When I think back to that last week we attended together as a family back in February, I tear up at the fact that we had no idea it would be the last time. Our whole world was about to change. 

COVID arrived in the U.S. a week later and spread like wildfire. Our weekly family church attendance on Saturday nights took place from the comfort of our living room and through a Zoom link for Life Group over the following six months. Then out of the blue this summer, our Life Group called a midweek meeting to break the news that whenever we did rejoin physically as a church, our Saturday night service no longer remained an option. Either we switch to Sundays, or we go back to the main campus. Though we had no intention of ever leaving Firewheel, I will say that the Sunday morning option did not even feel like an option to me. I felt in my heart at the first announcement that God was pulling us back to where we started. David was about to graduate and go to college, Juan had already gotten heavily involved in another church in McKinney on Sundays with his friends he met at DBU, and I had already taken a step back from women's ministry in order to attend a midweek marriage ministry with Mike at the Rockwall campus. No better time in life to make a change than this, I guess. 

Sundays are sacred to me. They are my day of rest and rejuvenation. A day to wake up and not feel rushed to be somewhere first thing in the morning, to catch up on physical rest, to spend quality time with God, to reconnect with my spouse, my family, or friends. To find time to write if there's something on my heart. When I first found Saturday night church sixteen years ago, church took on a whole new meaning to me, and I finally understood God's mandate to take an entire day each week to rest. Sunday is like my seventh day, and to me, it's sacred.  I just physically and mentally cannot seem to rest on a Saturday, as I feel like I have so much to catch up on after a full week of work. As long as I have the option to attend church on a Saturday night, to me, there is no other option. 

So, though we had no intentions of leaving, it seems that God has closed our chapter at Firewheel and is pulling us back to where we first started. In a sense, like coming back home. Since I always kept one foot planted in both locations, anyway, it doesn't feel a bit foreign to me. I feel like God is telling us, "I'm doing a new thing. Don't you see it?" We've been part of three different Life Groups over the last 17 years, and each one was exactly what we needed with the teaching we needed and the relationships we needed at the time. Perhaps now that we're entering a brand new "childless" season as a couple, there is a new group, new teacher, and new set of relationships He is preparing for us. 

All I know is, no matter what campus (or even country) I find myself in, Lakepointe Church always feels like home to me. And it is so, so good to be back home in church in the physical presence of other believers.

I really do love my church and am so grateful to be part of it for the last 17 years that I've lived in Texas.