My faith's new home

I grew up with the expectation that church happened every Sunday, and we would be there every Sunday - except for the week of the Turner County Fair.  Unlike most adolescents, I enjoyed this.  Like my dad, I started to feel that starting my week with church just made everything make more sense.

I was baptized as an infant in my grandparents' Missouri Synod Lutheran church.  During elementary school, we switched to an ELCA church for multiple reasons, and that's where I was confirmed.  After losing my grandfather and moving out to the family farm, we returned to the church of my childhood.  That church felt right when I was missing my grandfather, since he had helped build the pulpit and lectern, and had taken a trip out to the Black Hills to bring back stones for the baptismal font and the alter.  I could feel so much of him there.

While in high school, my community lost two sisters in a car accident, which devastated the town.  Out of that loss came a wonderful youth group, F.R.O.G. (Friends Rejoicing Over God), that helped a lot of us get through the trials of high school with our faith stronger than ever.

After that, however, I left for college.  I loved being a student at Stanford, a private non-religious university.  We also have a gorgeous church on campus - Memorial Church.  However, I struggled to find a home in this church community.  The services I went to were non-denominational or inter-denominational in name, but I found them to essentially be Catholic Mass-type services with some elements of Judaism sprinkled in.

This year, after nearly four and a half years of searching, I have found my faith's new home and my new church community.  One of the first times I visited, the sermon examined Psalm 23 and what the shepherd metaphors mean for us since - the pastor assumed - no one in the congregation was a shepherd.  After telling him where I came from and that I was a shepherd, I was able to laugh and talk to many people after church that day.  Now, they all know my name and look forward to seeing me week after week, and that's a great feeling.