Lord, please forgive us

You will never believe what we did on Sunday...Something I never ever imagined we would do...Something I never knew anyone would/could ever do.

We WALKED out of a church during the middle of the sermon. In our quest to find a new church home we have been visiting different churches each Sunday. This Sunday our worst fear happened. I found a church on-line in the small town we live in. It sounded great and had a blended/contemporary service that we are looking for. It has been around for hundreds of years (like our old church), so we thought it was a good choice. It wasn't. Our first sign was when we pulled into the parking lot and there were only a handful of cars. We ventured on and decided we were already there, we might at well go in. The church we attended the previous week there were so many people that no one noticed we were new. This Sunday, you could tell we were "the visitors". We walked in and asked the usher where the nursery was (the website indicated they had a nursery as well as children's programs). Well the usher said "We don't have any young children here anymore so we don't have a nursery." NOT a good sign again, but we decide to go on into the sanctuary, you really can't walk out at this point. We try to brave taking 3 kids to 'big church'.

While we were sitting there several people came over. We, being "the visitors", were the main focus. People continued to come over to us even after the service began. Finally, someone came over and told us there was a nursery downstairs so John left with Camden and Adalynn to try to get them to stay. Of course, neither of them would-which was fine since it was so dirty and nasty. Once again we have all three kids in the pew with us. Adalynn was starting to get loud, so I stepped out into the foyer. John was in the pew with Broderick and Camden kept going back and forth. He was very interested in the drinking fountain and small Dixie cups.

I was wandering around reading all the postings on various boards in the hallway while John was listening to the sermon with the boys. There was information about last year's Christmas party, the 2007 nursery schedule, and much more-more bad signs. Adalynn loved the way her voice echoed as we paced the hallways, so I stayed as far away from the sanctuary doors as possible. A few minutes later, John comes out with the boys and says lets go. At this point in time I am picturing the boys being horrible in the pew and he is just done with them and very frustrated. I am following him and urging the boys to walk quicker expecting someone to come after "the visitors" to see where they were going. Broderick keeps asking "why are we leaving" and John just tells him (and me) he'll tell us when we get to the car. I realize that we were not leaving because of their behavior.

We are finally in the safety of the van and John leans over and says, "when he (the pastor)started talking about his typewrite being possessed by demons as well as all the people he knew that were possessed, I knew we needed to leave-now how do I explain the 'demonic possession' the pastor was preaching about to Broderick?". Well, after all was said and done we just told Broderick and Camden that the pastor was talking more about the devil than about God and about how the pastor knew people and things that the devil lived in and made them bad. Broderick asked "if it is a church, then why was he talking so much about the devil and not about God?". We told Broderick "that is why we left".

We then went out to lunch and shopping for a little bit and nothing more was said about the experience. We thought we were safe and that the boys would just let it pass. That was until this morning. When I left the house to take Broderick to school, a train was stopped on the road we usually take. I used the handy GPS and went a different way and while we were driving Broderick says "maybe the devil got inside the train and wanted to make all these kids late for school". UGH!!!

Any suggestions? What do I do now? I hate that we even had to experience this. To our friends at Mars Hill: Please thank the Lord daily for giving you such a great place to worship. To everyone: HELP us in our quest to find a new church by praying that we will be successful. It definitely hasn't fallen into our laps like Mars Hill did.