I’m changing churches. Kind of. Or maybe just slowly. I finally couldn’t take the politics, apathy, and general cluelessness of my fellow congregates. There was an incident with my son’s Sunday school teacher that made me threshold. All the stuff that led up to it were kind of minorly bad, but not enough you’d do something about it.

That is kind of the worse stuff. Because you get used to it. That’s just the way it is and there isn’t anything better, so why do anything about it. (Unrelated, but related article on career apathy.)

So I don’t consider myself going to Kingwood Church of Christ anymore. I made that choice and then one of the ministers asked me to do lights for the Christmas play and I said yes. So I’m not really gone. I’ll be there every night this week working on the play. Of course it will prepare me a little for where I intend to volunteer at my new church.

My son still goes there and was REALLY hacked when I told him we were leaving. Right now we’re in two churches as a family. Works out kind of well because the new church’s schedule is pretty minimal. At least until I volunteer for something – which I’ve already decided to do – and we find a small group.

We’re going to Woodlands Church East. It is the second campus of the Fellowship of the Woodlands. I wasn’t so hip on the idea of a second campus, with the sermon piped in via video, but it was OK. FoW has over 14,000 members, and in their huge auditorium you are mostly watching the sermon on the big screens anyway. And I guess it isn’t always piped in, Pastor Kerry Shook was at WCE last Sunday.

WCE is about a 20 minute drive from our house, which isn’t far by my standards. It started in September and are meeting in the Atascocita High School. On Sunday mornings they about 80% fill the auditorium. They say that translates to 1200 people in the two services there. I’m sure they started with quite a few people because there would be a big contingent that drove 50 minutes to the main campus.

I don’t know if I was thinking of this conscientiously or not, but my sister-in-law was baptized out of a very lost life at FoW a decade ago. We came down from Austin for the baptism and visited the church when it met in the Woodlands high school.

Didn’t really look around at all when I decided to change. I knew WCE was here because of the billboards and decided I needed to stop just defending mega-churches and just go to one. And let me tell you nothing is watered down at WCE. Pastor Kerry’s sermons are fun and interesting, but they are also biblical and practical. His first sermon we heard was part of his decomercializing Christmas series. He suggested since the book of Luke has 24 chapters and there are 24 days till Christmas, why don’t we read a chapter a day and journal it. Also suggested as a kick off to go on at 24 media fast. Last week’s sermon was from I Kings 2 and talked about how God works miracles in our lives.

My wife and youngest son are still part of KWCOC. I’ve told M he can go to anything there he wants as long as there isn’t a major conflict of schedule. While I’d like to go to WCE’s 9 AM service instead of the 11 AM one, he can go to the High School Sunday morning class at KWCOC if we go at 11. So we do.

I am for the first time in a long time, inspired and excited by church. I don’t feel like I’m going just because I have to, or just for the kids.

That feels good.