When I was younger, I was actively involved in church, going to youth group weekly, services on Sunday and Wednesday, and loving God all the time in between.  Then I went to college, where I was taught to question everything.  And I began to question all of my beliefs.

After Julie and I moved to Orlando, she wanted to start going to church.  While she was in college, she was involved in BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministry).  She went through some tough times with her family, and the BCM helped her through. 

I still never got my answers, and based on my experience with Christians, they didn’t want to talk… they just wanted to have their faith and expect everyone else to do the same.  But I love my wife, and wanted her to be happy, so I agreed.  However, I had one demand.  The church had to be “cool,” meaning that I could wear jeans, they played good music (not those corny hymns), and the pastor had to keep me interested.  

We started looking up churches on the internet.  Our thought was that a cool church would have a cool website.  And we finally stumbled upon Discovery Church and decided to give it a try.  As soon as we walked in and saw the rock band on the stage, I was like, “This is cool.”   

Julie and I started going to a 10-week class called Starting Point .  The Starting Point website says, “Starting Point is a conversational environment where people can explore faith and experience community. Starting Point groups are a safe place for people with questions about faith, as well as those who want to learn about the Bible and Christianity.”  Basically, this is exactly what I needed.

We became really involved with the church, we joined groups, we made great friends, and then we moved.

Julie got a new job in Tallahassee doing exactly what she wanted to do.  I had the opportunity to leave a job that I hated.  And we were taken away from Discovery Church.  We could watch Discovery Church every week via their live video on the web, but we wouldn’t get the interaction that we loved.  But we didn’t find a new church, because what we wanted was an exact clone of Discovery Church, and that didn’t seem to exist in Tallahassee.  

I recently discovered a program called TwitterLocal where you can see every tweet coming from a specific city.  After living in Tallahassee for 7 months, we still had no friends.  In an attempt to make friends in Tallahassee, I started following people from TwitterLocal.  The next morning, I started seeing a bunch of tweets coming in about #ENTchurch.  More specifically, the people were AT church, tweeting about church.  And even more specifically, they were giving the pastor crap for wearing a bedazzled shirt.  This was interesting.

So I started talking to the people from Every Nation Tallahassee and decided that it was finally time to try a church.  Julie and I went to #ENTchurch today.  We met @claytonbell and @mattmjohnson, and saw @jenherrick (but didn’t meet her).  Later, even more Twitter people welcomed me to the church and apologized for not meeting me.  My first impressions of the church and of the people are really positive.  

I would like to see what they have to offer outside of Sunday services.  For example, at Discovery Church, they had groups where people would get together and go hiking or ride motorcycles, and a good friend (@mikedfunk) is trying to form a running group or have a church sponsored 5K.  Shortly before we left, we started going to a Love Talk group that was aimed at helping couples better relate to each other.  ENT may already have these types of groups in place… and if not, this may be a good opportunity for me to start some.  

We’re definitely going back again next week, but then we’ll have to take a two-week hiatus for our cruise.  But after that, we may “shop around” and see what else Tallahassee has to offer.  It’s definitely nothing against Every Nation Tallahassee.  We just feel like finding a church is like buying a house… you shouldn’t buy the first house that you see.  It may be that we look around and realize that ENT is the place for us, or we may find something that suits us better. 

But either way, I know that the people I’ve met from #ENTChurch, even though I’ve only known them a short time, will be good friends and good resources in Christ.

Tags: church, entchurch, tallahassee, Twitter

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.