The Status of My Relationship with God, part 3

And finally, part 3. Find part 1 here [x]. And part 2 here [x].

When I left Chicago, I was really discouraged about finding a church in Monroe. And once, I got to Monroe, I gave up hope in finding a church that would make me feel like I belonged. There are pretty much two options here: Southern Baptist and Pentecostal. There's a handful of others, including a Methodist church and a couple Catholic churches. But there are so many Baptist churches. And the Pentecostal churches have pretty big congregations from what I can tell. These churches were not going to have the same values that I had loved about my church in Chicago. These were traditional, conservative churches, and I am neither of these things.

When I am home for the weekend or short visits, I will attend the youth and young adult services at the church in which I grew up. But I cannot go to the Sunday services any longer. The two out of the last three times that I attended on a Sunday I got up and left part way through the service. And the other time, I wanted to leave, but I was sitting with someone I know to whom I didn't feel comfortable explaining myself. I questioned the necessity of attending church regularly for a while. And the sad thing is that I have come to realize why church is something one should partake in regularly. But I don't, simply, because I do not have a place that feeds my spiritual needs that reflects the values that I have.

So, where am I now? I have been listening to the podcast of the services that my church in Chicago puts out. I don't have a regular schedule for doing that yet, but it's something that I have been making an effort to put into my weekly routine. Perhaps those podcasts can be something that I write about here in the future. I also have the sporadic youth and young adult services that I attend back home. I am not radio silent with God like I was a few years ago, but there are several things that I am working through. Trying to understand how my worldview and religious/spiritual life can coexist is far from easy.

I know that my time in Monroe is quickly ending. By this time next year, I will be moving somewhere else in the country to start my doctorate. I have started looking for churches that reflect the values that I have (without getting too crazy), and since they are almost all in larger cities, I am having some luck. For now, I am making due with what I've got, and I'm taking it all day-by-day.

Until next time,
<3 Amber Marie

The Status of My Relationship with God, part 2

As promised, this is part two to the timeline of my relationship with church and God. I left off with finding a church in Chicago, so I'm just going to jump right in. If you haven't read part 1, click here [x].

Finding a church in Chicago turned out to be a lot harder than I'd anticipated. Chicago is huge. I knew this, of course. But because it was so big, trying to find a church was daunting. I had really only ever attended two churches--the one I'd grown up in and my grandparent's church. There were denominations, locations, sizes, and traditional versus contemporary to consider. Luckily, my roommate was interested in finding a church too. One Saturday night in September, we finally decided on a church. It was a mega-church (6000 people there on a Sunday morning), but it had a promising college ministry. We went to service the next morning, and I did not like it. There were too many people. There was a program that had every minute planned out. And I don't know if it just happened to be the service that we went to, but they had some sort of induction for new members of the church. Like member members, the special elite club of the church. The ceremony took up quite a bit of time--there were like 50 people--that could probably have been spent on something more spiritual. I know that a lot of churches have membership like that, but it felt like something meant to condemn those who weren't part of the club. (And in any case, I, personally, don't think that a membership like that is something to be paraded in front of the rest of the congregation for the sake of exclusion.) Anyway, despite the both of us disliking the main service, we decided to check out the college service on Thursday.

Intro to My Ph.D. Program Search

As I prepare for the fall semester, I have some things to consider on top of the normal school things. Beginning in late September and early October, I have to start filling out applications for Ph.D. programs. And while I am normally a procrastinator, there is one thing that I have never procrastinated on and that is selecting the schools and programs that I want to apply to. I'm pretty sure that I started my undergrad search in the beginning of my junior year of high school, and I know that it was well before senior year started. And when I first thought of going to Chicago, I wasted no time looking for the programs that I could go to. When applying for graduate school, I had a list ready by the end of my junior year--though that was for law school and I changed my mind over the summer. So, of course, my search for Ph.D. programs started months ago. As a matter of fact, I have a detailed document with the schools and programs, the amount of funding they offer, the application fees and deadlines, and the averages of how long it takes people to get through the program.

And here's where you get to learn how ridiculous I am...

I have a system of rating programs to figure out which programs have the best combination of things that I desire. This involves the location of the school, the amount of funding available, and the features of the program. Each category gets a score, and then I add the scores together to get a composite score. Then the programs are ranked by composite score from lowest to highest with the lowest being number one on my list. I have 8 programs from 8 different schools on my list. I don't anticipate adding or subtracting any programs between now and the time applications are due.

So, let's go through the list.