Sundays in the City #1

It started out as most hypotheses do, with a naiveté born of plausible conjecture and a premature confidence in my own ability to ask the right question. And in the end, as in most of the “what matters” stuff of life; my discoveries yielded a broadened imagination, and a heightened awareness of my own ignorance. Basically, a wafer of hope and a drink of humility poured out week by week in equal measure. 

Having recently stepped down from a teaching role in a large interdenominational Bible study and with my own church in a state of transition; it seemed an opportune time to take on a year long “internship” of sorts.  My husband needed a self-prescribed layperson “sabbatical” and my youngest was off to study and work.  I woke one morning with some questions that simply would not go away and ended up committing to spend a year’s worth of “Sabbaths” as a first time visitor in 52 different faith communities in the City of Angels.  I set out with spreadsheets and a thinly veiled bias hoping to observe, write about and help replicate those congregations that were “getting it right”.  In the state that boasts the largest number of mega-churches in the nation (200 in 2018), the media reports on the continuing decline in overall membership and dwindling millennial connectedness to mainline denominations seemed to offer little consensus on what might stem the tide.

As anyone might guess, what began with a search for answers in the church rapidly became a no-holds-barred revelation of my own heart and the indomitable mercies of God. 

Join me here each week if you’d like to know more. An introduction follows this post for the backstory involved in the genesis of what became an unexpected invitation to a spiritual rekindling and for me, a necessary communion.