Change Has Come

A few posts back I talked about worship styles and visiting a church with Jason. I alluded to the fact that I saw a possible change in my life as a result of that. Well...it has happened. Jason and I have decided to start attending Grace Family Church. Now, I am excited about this prospect, but it has been very hard to leave the church that I've belonged to for almost 22 years. And that's what I'm focusing on in this post.

In the month that Jason and I have been discussing this decision, I've thought a lot about my time at Idlewild. I was SO excited to start going there. I visited a couple of times with my friend, KayAnn, whose family had begun attending there. Then I went to the Christmas presentation in 1987. Back then, Idlewild was still meeting at the building on the corner of Hanna and Highland. The building seated roughly 500 people, and with the 2 Christmas "trees" on either side, there was hardly any room for a stage. But the presentation was so good! I liked it so much, I wanted my parents to see it, and my dad went with me a few days later. He said, "Yeah. That was good. I may want to go to this church." Yay! In January 1988 he and I went to a church service there. The rest of my family did not come with us, mostly because my mom worked at the church we had been attending, and felt weird about going. But after 2 weeks, my mom, Amy, and Kyle started going with us, too, and we joined that April. My grandparents also credit me with getting them to go to Idlewild. That's one thing that's been so ironic to me about my leaving. But I'll get to that later.

After only a few months of attending Idlewild, they made this big announcement that we were going to be meeting at Chamberlain High School on Sundays. It's funny, because I can remember that for the first few months at Chamberlain, I missed the atmosphere of Hanna & Highland. But now, I have such good memories of Chamberlain. And how fitting that during preplanning this school year, I had a training at Chamberlain, so I was hit with all of these memories from that time period...Christmas presentations, choir tour home concerts, college group, July 4th presentations, and so forth.

Of course, after 5 years of being at Chamberlain, we were able to move to the Bearss Avenue campus. Lots of memories there, too. More Christmas, July 4th, and Easter presentations, great times with friends, Saturday night services...and of course moving to the current building, which is where I got married.

One of the hardest things about leaving, for me, is leaving my music pastor, Ron Upton. One of my first memories of him is on a Sunday morning when I was visiting with my friend, Jackie. We passed by Ron. She introduced me to him, and he said, "Claire, what do you sing, alto or soprano?" I said, "Alto." He had his hand on my shoulder, closed his eyes, and said, "Lord, we need Claire." Now, if you know Ron, you probably can see him saying this, in a quick sort of way. But little did I know how much singing in his music ministry would come to mean to me. He has deemed me "one of his all-time favorites" and I think the same way about him. I always knew I wanted him to perform my wedding whenever that time came, and of course, he did. I've sung in the various ensembles, Ecclesia when I was in high school. Then One Accord and One Voice. For the last almost 10 years, I have sung on the praise team. It started as the Saturday night praise team when we added the Saturday service in January 2000. Then, in 2003, Ron wanted to add a praise team, for vocal support, in all of the services. So we quickly began doing the Saturday night, 3 Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night services. I don't remember how long that was before we started rotating, but we did. New teams were formed when we moved to the current building. And Sunday was my last day to sing on the praise team. Thank you to Ron's wife, Miska, who told me there's always a place for me on the praise team.

Speaking of my last Sunday at Idlewild, I was of course finding myself very sentimental. Then, in his sermon, Ken mentions the pastor who preceded him, who was the pastor when I started going to Idlewild. I won't go into details about the story, because it's not important, but I was first crying because gosh, another old memory during my last days at Idlewild. Then, I was crying, because the story provided some closure about the pastor that I was really glad to have gotten. And I thought, "Wow, God. Thanks that I was able to hear that on my last Sunday there!" So, that was very cool.

Needless to say, I've been sentimental and emotional about leaving. I think that's understandable after 22 years of being some place. But please don't hear me say that I am not happy with our decision to go to Grace Family Church. At Idlewild, Ron has the very difficult job of planning worship services that many types of people attend. You've got the older generation, most of whom grew up on and love the old hymns. Then you've got the next generation, who grew up on the traditional, but like some of the softer praise songs. Each generation likes it a little more contemporary, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just hard, or impossible, to please every generation. Right now, Jason and I are wanting a more contemporary style of worship. That's why I find it ironic that I first got my family to go to Idlewild, because now I'm the one leaving. But God has used it so much in my life, and I still love it.

I've felt the last few days that maybe I'd been finding a lot of my identity in "I sing in the choir/praise team at Idlewild." Of course, not completely, but now that I can't say that, I realized how much that meant to me. Not that it was about me when I was up there, because I truly wanted to worship God and prompt others to worship Him, but it's real easy to find some significance in that.

Ultimately, it's all about God anyway. He uses His churches to reach people in different ways. He doesn't favor one church over another. And because I believe that He orchestrates the details in my life for a purpose, I know that He will do great things in my life, and in my marriage, as Jason and I move to, and become involved, at Grace. And of course, more memories are to come.

I know this was a very long post. Thanks for reading it, and sorry for the jumbled up emotions. I've had a lot on my mind the last few days.