The Perfect Church

Growing up, I never really had to worry about where I was going to church. Being a preacher's kid sort of determines that for you.  When I went to college, it was really the first time I had gotten to chose where I worshipped, although there wasn't a whole lot of choice there, either, because I went where my friends who had cars went (though I did get to chose which friends to go with depending on where they were going).  Then, when I got married, we worshipped at the congregation Jeremy's dad preached at.  (Yes, we're both preacher's kids!)
When we moved to Texas over five years ago, it was the first time either of us had really needed to go out and think about what we wanted in a church home, what we were comfortable with in worship, what we needed so that we could find our niche and a place to serve.  We found a wonderful congregation during our time in central Texas, even though it was a lot bigger than any other congregation I had ever attended. It is our family -- especially with our physical families far away from us.
Now that we're moving again, we have to go through this all over again.  We've visited several congregations up here so far and have a couple more to "try out" before we decide which one to place our membership at.  Some, I was comfortable with except that they had children's worship and I have a big problem with that (if you want to know why, I might expound on it later, but that's not the point of this particular post).  Others had praise teams, aka micced men and women who helped lead in singing.  This is way too close to a woman being in a leadership role for me (see above note about children's worship).  We went to one on Sunday that just felt right.  I know, this sort of sounds like Goldilocks, but it's way more important than the right-sized bed.
The funny thing is, growing up in the church, you come to expect certain things:  prayers before communion, accapella singing, scriptures, preaching, etc.  I, however, get this sense of everything being right when I walk into a church building and it smells like wood and old song books and stale perfume from the years and years of old ladies that have worshipped there.  Silly, right?  I'm not going to let myself say we need to worship there just because it smells right, but it does make me feel more like it's where I'm supposed to be. I guess we can call it fond nastolgia.  It doesn't hurt any that everyone was super friendly and they gave us yummy loaves of bread for visiting.
What makes you feel like you're in the right place when you walk into a church building?