A while back, I blogged a little about the "fun" Protestant church I used to attend when I first realized that God was real. It was situated in one of those pre-fab steel buildings, and the sanctuary was a large room with grey indoor-outdoor carpeting and movable dais units that they stacked up to make an altar on Sunday. There was a quilt on the wall behind the altar that had a plain, geometric cross worked into it, and there were five banners on either side, hanging from the exposed rafters. No pews, but there were hundreds of molded plastic chairs, which could be either set up in a semi-circle for Sunday services, or stacked and stowed away so that the area could be used for carnivals, youth sleep-ins, and other functions.

In other words, it was a significantly casual environment. In fact, the name of the church even had a "Joe's Bar and Grill" feel to it. I used to work in the office on Saturdays, and every once in a great while, somebody would wander in, thinking it was a restaurant, or maybe a dance hall.

This was all by design, of course. The pastor and his wife, when they founded the church in the 1970s, wanted people to feel that Christ was perfectly accessible to them. They cultivated a "come as you are" vibe in an effort to show people that they didn’t have to shape up in order to become Christians -- Jesus would meet them as they were, "warts and all." Which brings to mind an old Scottish hymn that Julie Miller sang on one of her earlier albums:

Come ye weary, heavy laden
Bruised and mangled by the Fall
If you tarry till you're better
You will never come at all.

In my early days as a Christian, I felt that this was the only way to go. The atmosphere made one feel comfortable right away. There were few occasions to feel awkward -- you walked in, found a chair, and the band started to play. Maybe you sat and listened, maybe you stood and clapped along with the crowd. Maybe you swayed and sang at the top of your lungs (it was so loud in there, it's not like anybody would notice if you were a little off). There were no prayers to memorize, no prescribed times to kneel, no ancient gestures to make. You didn't even have to follow along in a hymnal or prayer book -- the words to the songs were shown on a big movie screen via overhead projector. It took very little effort to join in the worship services at this church, and you certainly didn't have to become something other than what you already were to participate.

Even now, having journeyed to the Catholic faith, I look back on those days and I think, yes, that was exactly the place I needed to be at that time. If Christianity had included rules and regulations and behaving just so, I would have given up in short order. After years of thinking there was no God, no eternity, no help and no hope, I was only capable of grasping one truth at a time. And the first Truth that God made sure would be cemented in my mind from that point on was that He loved me, He wanted me and He had sent Christ to die for me in order to bring me to Him.

Maybe for a person who has grown up always knowing this, it seems ridiculous that a grown woman (I was 24 at the time) would need such simple assurance. But it's not unlike the experience that deaf or hearing impaired people go through when they receive a cochlear implant that enables them to hear. They return home and discover that refrigerator hums or that the pipes whistle when they first turn on the shower, and they almost can't make sense of it. They have to return to that sound, over and over again until their brain can accept the truth of it.

And that's what learning about God was like for me in the beginning. So I'm really grateful that out of all the places He could have brought me to in those early days, He led me to the "Come As You Are" church. He knew there was time for me to learn more later.

Now I stand as if in the entryway to a huge mansion, the Catholic Church. I've had a quick tour, but I know there are a great many things yet to explore. The richness to this Faith is more than I had ever thought possible, and I am alternately eager to see what's next and contented with just getting to know the basics better. Either way, I trust God that I'll be in a good place.

--Sparki