Church Compromise

I had a problem. I made a decision with my wife to regularly attend a church I wasn't 100% in love with. It's a great church that is a force of good in this world, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I don't feel comfortable talking about why, because it seems so petty in the midst of all the incredible things they do, but the longer I attended the more discontented I grew.

There's a long story about how this happened, so I won't get into it, but I came across a pastor named Tim Chaddick who pastors Reality LA (Realityla.com). Unfortunately, I learned about him and the church after we committed to going to the West-side Vineyard. The reason I committed to going to the Vineyard was because I had given up on there being missional/kingdom minded churches close to where we live. It's kind of like going to a restaurant and ordering a meal, but then you realize 10 mins later that there's another menu that has exactly what you've been looking for. What do you do? My wife loved the Vineyard, so I decided to suck it up for her an the kids.

But then one Sunday Rachel was ill and Jessica graciously volunteered to stay home with her while Jonah and I went to church. Now why would I drive 30mins to a church I'm not thrilled with when I could test out Reality LA 6mins away? Jonah and I went. He had a good time and I instantly became a fan. The one problem....the one MAJOR problem, was that I knew it was a church that didn't suite my wife. I could just tell from our last 18 months of church searching that this wasn't her cup of tea. I ended up going a second time with both the kids while Jessica was away for the weekend and we all had a good time and I had another powerful experience.

Going those two times to Reality was like throwing miracle grow on my discontent with the Vineyard church. It was like taking a 2-liter of coke and putting it in your bicycle basket and riding over 1 mile of bumpy LA pavement. The pressure was building. I stopped holding in my satisfaction and talked to my wife more about it. She knew I wasn't 100% satisfied with the Vineyard, but now she was hearing how much i was discontented (every detail)

Next thing, the dominoes start to fall. It turns out just recently that the one good set of friends we met at the Vineyard decided to move back to Haiti. Jessica and I are both very sad about this, but snap (sound of scissors' cutting) goes our strongest ties to the Vineyard. There's another domino, but I can't talk about that yet without giving away the whole story...

So come Easter Sunday when we go to church you won't be able to find us at the Vineyard....nor will you be able to find us at Reality LA. No, you would have to search somewhere much closer to our home....