Not sure. For a few weeks my wife and I have visited a local Unitarian Universalist (UU) church with the goal of establishing a communicative link with someone other than ourselves. The reason we have selected a church atmosphere over any other venue is because of our faith. We are followers of Christ, but our peculiar form of doctrine (or lack thereof) makes us not quite comfortable with the plethora of churches available — both denominational and non-denominational (which is really just a title; they mirror other denominations).
Our spiritual journey has been both exciting and somewhat lonely. We were steeped in Christian fundamentalism, but after 35 or so years of our married walk together, we began to question some of our doctrine. Like the validity or purpose of the Rapture and Tribulation, how the world will end (if it ends) and why is an eternal torture in a burning hell necessary?
We started taking Jesus at his word. He prayed to God and called him his father, so we wondered how he could be God at the same time. Sure, he said “my father and I are one,” but that could just mean that they were of the same mind, like “my father and I are just alike.” So there goes the trinity.
And we struggled to find definite comments or teaching from the Son of God to support the main stream salvation/end times position that so many promote. The only thing that we could come up with is that Jesus wants us to be nice (pardon the oversimplification).
We went from organized church to house church to no church. We tried a couple of Methodist churches because they seemed rather innocuous. But we felt that getting involved outside of worship service might put us in a position of revealing our beliefs, thereby making us and them uncomfortable. Our next stop - the Unitarian Universalists.
We had done some research on the UUs and learned that they were tolerant of all religions and were big on encouraging human kindness. So far, so good. We have attended three “worship” services: one on remembering UUs who have passed on; one on doing your own thing; and the last one could have been titled, “Is is possible that I’m a humanist?”
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My pastor called last night. Funny, I called her my pastor; I never joined her church. My wife and I attended that church off an on for quite a number of months, worship services only. No Sunday school, no church dinners or Bible studies. The timing of her call couldn’t have been better because we had decided almost that very day that we wouldn’t be going back.