First, I have to admit that I'm still a work in progress when it comes to being a Christian (aren't we all?) It has been an arduous journey for me to get to this point in my Christian faith, with forays into the "high church" world (Catholicism), the "low church" world (charismatic congregations), and several points in between--as well as a few points rather far from the faith. The "pilgrimage" has not been an easy one, but I do feel I'm at a point where I'm comfortable in my faith in Christ...even as I yearn to learn more deeply what it truly means to be a Christian.

And that is perhaps why I'm feeling my present discouragement. I find myself desiring something which has become more elusive these days--a church that is truly a "church", in the primitive sense of the word. What do I mean by that? Well, let me try to share some of the experiences I've encountered recently, and compare those experiences with what I perceive to be more in line with the Scriptural model of a community of believers.

At one end of the spectrum, you have what I mentioned earlier as "high church". A "worship service" typically involving a rather ritualized order of service; liturgy and creeds; dogma and choreography. Once you've been immersed in such patterns, you could easily walk through such a service in rather zombie-esque fashion--totally disengaged from worship of God in any intellectual, emotional, or spiritual sense. And you're left wondering whatever happened to those 90 minutes of your life--an hour and a half that you can never recover, but are left wondering just how you squandered that time.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have what I called "low church"; and here I've encountered at least 2 distinct "philosophies" of worship. The first of these is similar to the "high church" ecclesiasticalism, with a high degree of form and function dictated by tradition--you're locked into a rigid pattern of "worship", and Heaven help the person who questions any of the elements! And to top it all off, you're typically treated to some form of sermon that tries to scare the hell out of you, as well as make you believe that anyone who does not conduct themselves in similar lock-step fashion is already condemned to the agonies of Hell. A sort of "my way or the highway" theology.

If you don't have that, you have what I perceive as an over-commercialized form of faith. Marketing schemes to attract more "upwardly mobile" young Americans to discover why this particular church is the greatest place to bring your family; a mini-mall outside the worship hall, where you can have your half-caf, double-dip, no-cal latte while tweeting about the latest self-help spiritual guide you just found in the bookstore, after dropping the young'uns off in the Kristian Kids theme park, before going into the glitzy state-of-the-art Hallelujah Hall to participate in the health & wealth pap that will give me an ego boost to last through the coming week.

Now, before you "flame" me into a well-charred crisp, I'll admit to a good amount of hyperbole in what I've just written. I did that simply because I want to express what I'm desperately missing in communal worship--a community of like-minded believers who simply want to gather together and worship their God and Savior; who want to sing songs of adoration and praise; who want to study from His powerful and divine Words of Life; who want to emulate what to read  in the book of Acts. People who gathered together as they could and where they could, sharing of themselves with one another of their talents and possessions and needs and desires and faith and hope and aspirations and love. That's something akin to what I'm looking for, and something which I have not yet found.

I'm sure there are those who will quickly tell me of their successes in finding such a faith community for themselves, and I rejoice in their blessings at having such in their lives. But I'm still looking for such a thing in my life....