Visiting a different church every Sunday for a year, Part 1

After more than 30 years of being a pastor’s wife, I found myself “out of a job” at the end of 2006. My husband, who had pastored nondenominational and Protestant churches since early adulthood, converted to Roman Catholicism, becoming a layperson. At the time we were living in a lovely old manse attached to a large Presbyterian church in Philadelphia. Although the neighborhood had declined since the church had experienced its high point in membership in the late fifties, the small congregation that remained was loving, kind, and had been incredibly generous to us during the three years that we had been there. They accepted Neil’s resignation with bewilderment and with good wishes for our family, and we moved to an apartment in New Jersey. For the first time in more than thirty years, I was no longer expected to attend my husband’s church on Sunday mornings.

This presented me with a chance to do something I had often thought about over the years. I wanted to drop in on other church services, and see what other folks were doing on Sunday mornings.

I had been baptized in a Lutheran church and confirmed in a Congregational church. I had been part of Jesus people gatherings in the early seventies, had attended Pentecostal churches and para-church groups, and had been a member of a nondenominational student-based church. Most of my church life, though, had occurred in the context of one mainline Protestant denomination.

I wanted to see more!