When is it time to move?
In one of my recent posts I introduced the idea that my wife and I are seriously considering a church change. We’ve been going to our current church for between 7-8 years and are very involved. We’re most involved on the music side of things. My wife sings in the choir and I play lead guitar for the Praise & Worship on Sunday mornings and evenings, as well as leading praise and worship for the youth and the college & career classes on Wednesday. I really enjoy playing in our church’s band. My mom, who’s a phenomenal piano and organ player, also plays in the band. Besides us there’s an incredible piano player, drummer and bassist. So it’s a 5 piece and we get to rockin’. In fact here’s an audio clip that I recorded about two years ago of a choir song that we did called "I’m Alive". Give it a couple seconds to load.
A few technical notes, this was done on a Roland VS-1680 about two years ago with everything sub-mixed to 8 tracks and recorded. So whatever sound I was getting from the drums, that’s what I got. I don’t like the way the drums sound on here, but not much can be done after the fact. That’s the blessing and curse of live recording. I love live recording because of the energy that gets captured and I think that this clip translates the energy. For those into audio production, I’m now focusing completely on mobile recording using a MOTU 896HD 16 tracks at a time into a laptop running Nuendo. Take a listen and we’ll continue with the discussion. Oh yeah, that’s yours truly on the vocals and guitar.
Here’s a screen shot of me mixing it in Nuendo. Screenshots are always cool.
I hope that didn’t make you cringe too much. So I like playing in our band. We originally came to our church because of the pastor’s preaching. This guy provides a tremendous amount of insight and wisdom. He basically picks a book of the bible and preaches through it, several verses at a time, providing insight into why this was important and how it relates to God’s relationship with man and our relationship with him. It was good meaty stuff that was completely different than what we’d been getting. Now, that seems to be the reason we feel it’s time for a move. Personally, and I think my wife feels this too, I’m at a place where I need the relationship side of Christ. I need to know his love for me and how I should live in light of that love. Right now I feel like I go to seminary on Sunday morning and it’s just wearing me thin. I mean, we’re going through Ecclesiastes for crying out loud. I’m losing focus in 5 minutes.
Ok, so there’s one reason. Another reason is that in the time that we’ve been there, we haven’t really bonded with anyone, other than my parents. For some reason we just don’t click with anyone at the church that is even near our age. I’ve got some of my close Christian friends that I work with that go to a church that I’ve heard great things about, from the preaching to the praise. I feel like if I go to a church where I’ve got something in common with the folks, I’ll actually be able to develop those relationships that make a church what it is; a body of believers called to uplift Christ and each other. Something like that anyway.
The final reason is that right now, I feel like I’m going to work when I go to church. Sunday is not a day of rest and Wednesday is a honkin’ killer. The new church we’re looking at has two Sunday morning services, no sunday night and no wednesday night. In leiu of that they get together in discipleship groups. Now that is something Sunette and I have been itching for. I feel that all in all, the move will help us connect and grow deeper in our walk with Christ, something that has felt a little under served for a while.
Here’s the question…am I being selfish? Do I want to move for me rather than taking into account whether there’s still a need in the church for me to be there, for whatever reason? That’s got me a little perplexed. So, when is it time to change churches? The roots are deep, so it’ll take a little while to uproot, be I think we’re ready for the change.
We’ll be on vacation from tomorrow until July 20th. I’m trying to decide whether or not to leave the laptop at home and just take a book. I prolly will, so I’ll be seeing ya’ll when we get back. Maybe with some good fishing pictures. Oh dang, that reminds me…I haven’t posted about our fly-fishing trip to the Hiwassee River. We’ll I might just take the time and do that today too. Peace out.
