Back to Church

One exciting development of the past week has been the feeling that we are starting to connect and become a part of the church we have been going to here in Blacksburg. The church (called [nlcf] - and no, I don't know what the brackets are about, but they always use them) has existed as a church on campus for students for a long time, but recently planted a "Downtown" congregation consisting mostly of grad students and older people (like us) living in the area. I went there a bit as a student, so it's neat for me to see how the church has grown and developed a new focus.

Getting connected to a new church is always difficult and awkward. I'm not really a very good social person in big groups, and I feel out of place in a room where I know nobody. We came in at a difficult time too, when the church was gearing up for the start of the semester and return of 90% of their congregation, so there was a bit of the feeling that we had somehow fallen between the cracks and nobody really noticed we were there.

Thankfully, we had two great opportunities to get connected with the congregation this week that have encouraged us. First, I signed up to try out to play drums in the band this past weekend, and we ended up having our first practice on Monday night. I haven't had the opportunity to play drums since we left Philly, so it was great to get to meet the others in the band and to play again.

Also, last night April and I went to one of the "homegroups" - which is [nlcf]'s term for small group Bible studies - for the first time. We had to leave a little early because we had to be back here for the BCM Bible study time, but it was still great to get to meet and hang out with a bunch of other people from the church. This is something that we've really missed since we were had to leave our fantastic small group in Philly, and we are really excited to get back into a group like this.