My First Church

A year or so after I became a Christian I started attending my first church at age 16. This church did and does and will always hold a special place in my heart. 1st Church, as I’ll call it here, was my first impression of what a church is, and it was a beautiful one. 

1^st Church was an Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). I’m not sure I knew that at the time, as the concept of denominations was lost on me. I was a “baby Christian,” and I hadn’t grown up in church, and the notion of denominations struck me as unnecessary categorization. It was church – no more, and no less. It was my church, and I belonged there.

All my Young Life friends and leaders attended there too. We met in a middle school, and then a community center, and later a school again, and it was comforting to me that church happened in a “normal place.” No pews, no hymnals, no liturgy, no fancy clothes, no passing the peace (I just experienced that for the first time about a year ago and I was like WTF is this?). It was “low church” and I loved it.

We sang songs together. As a choir girl, that aspect alone hooked me. I belted my heart out every Sunday. I was often moved to tears singing about Jesus and how much he loved me. I’d put a hand up in the air, sometimes both, to praise my Savoir. I stood up and sat down as I wanted during worship (no need for that “please stand” and “you may now be seated” nonsense), I danced if the mood struck me, and no one said boo about any of it. Churches have rules? If you would have told me that at 16, I would have laughed at you. I felt wildly free, unburdened, beloved — and it was a rush.

1st Church instilled in me a love of Scripture and a love of people, a love of community and a love of story (and fueled a preexisting love of donuts). The Bible was presented as holy, but also as incredibly dear. People were presented as broken, but also deeply precious. Community was presented as a non-negotiable component of healthy living. Stories (testimonies) were presented as holy too, and although I’m sure it wasn’t intended, I internalized that they were just as holy as Scripture. The honoring of people’s stories is a holy practice I carry with me to this day.

Kids danced and played at the worship band’s feet every Sunday morning. There were gobs of kids there, almost twice as many as there were adults. Twenty families brought dinners to their fellow church members who had new babies or surgery without a second thought. Everyone took care of each other, and everyone pitched in too. It’s commonplace for 20% of a church to do 80% of the work – the workload was shared more equitably at 1^st Church. Every year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, they put on a huge community event that was a church/pep rally mashup. It brought together two things I worshipped — Jesus and high school football — and my little cheerleader self was just over the moon with delight. And when bad things happened, people shared and they were seen and embraced and loved.

There was crying and laughing and an embodiment of “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” It was authentic and that was everything to me. I adored my first church, and those years were a time of pure joy.

See, I didn’t grow up going to church. I cannot relate to the common story of being forced into church by one’s parents, or being influenced by a formative Sunday School teacher, or participating in a Christmas play. Other than attending some VBS summer programs (my mom said it was the cheapest childcare around, and she did not discriminate: Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, whoever would take us!), church was not part of my childhood landscape.

So for me, my first church was a whole lot like my first boyfriend. I was in love with the church in the purest way. And like a teenager sneaks around her parents to spend more time with her boyfriend, that’s exactly what I did with church. I told lies to go to Bible study and potlucks. It never occurred to me that anyone went to church begrudgingly or out of a sense of duty. I only ever went to church because I wanted to, and I stole away time with my church like a forbidden lover. 

I gave my heart to the church with abandon. My heart hadn’t been broken yet. I didn’t even know it could break.

The pregnancies that occur after a loss are often called rainbow pregnancies — they come after a storm. I sometimes refer to my first pregnancy as my sunshine pregnancy — it was before I knew loss, before I knew miscarriage, before I knew death.

My first church was a sunshine pregnancy. Nothing had died yet. I didn’t even know it could die.

There’s a country song by Sarah Buxton called “Innocence” that cuts to my heart every time I hear it. It resonates with me the way it was intended — reflecting on your first love relationship — but recently it struck me as very appropriate for my first church experience too. After all, that was indeed a first love…

And coming here has made me come to this:
the one thing I can’t get back
is the one thing I miss.

And it was breaking rules, flying blind
what you see through younger eyes.
It wasn’t what I thought it was:
man, I swore he was the one.
And now and then I miss those days,
but coming back to this place,
I realize it ain’t him I miss…
it’s that young girl, wide-eyed, first love
one time innocence.

1^st Church was my innocence. It’s the one thing I can’t get back and the deepest thing I miss.

Light the fire (Light the fire) In my soul (In my weary soul). Fan the flame (Fan the flame), Make me whole (Make my spirit whole). Lord, You know (Lord, You know), Where I’ve been (Where I’ve been). So light the fire in my heart again. — Light the Fire, Fusebox

Photo credits in order:

• Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
• Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
• Photo by Riley McCullough on Unsplash
• Photo by Christina Rivers on Unsplash
• Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash