The Familiar Doxology

When Ethan and I first moved out to Waco, Texas for seminary we started visiting churches each Sunday. I knew what I didn't want in a church: I didn't want a large church where I might get lost in the crowd, I didn't want the worship to be rock concert-esq and I didn’t want it to be a church where I would have to question their support of my calling to ministry. This list was a great starting point, but a list of what you don’t want will only get you so far. It only narrows down the playing field.  A list of “don’ts” does not clearly articulate what you hope to find. 

The one thing I carried with me across the country as a recent intern at Highland Hills, was that I was hoping to find a church that would play the doxology during worship. I wanted the warmth and the community I had found at Highland Hills. I wanted the familiarity in this strange new place where I knew no one. I longed for church family when my own was hundreds of miles away. I don’t know why I latched onto that specific part of worship, but I knew deep down that if a church also played the doxology, it might just cover what I was hoping to find. 

As budding seminarians, we visited all kinds of churches those first few months. We found some larger sized churches with expansive sanctuaries and others with old crumbling ones. One Sunday a few weeks in, we found ourselves visiting one in a former Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Inside it was a giant box of a building with lots of twinkling lights. I was weary from the constant newness of learning to be in a new city and a new state. The worship of the church that morning  wasn't really my style. It was a tad too loud and a tad too trendy. But at one point in the service, I heard the familiar notes through the guitar on stage: the doxology. And just like it is the tradition at Highland Hills, that Sunday morning, I  sang the doxology as a means of affirming my faith together after the offering. The familiar hymn washed over me as a reminder that God was still present, even in this very different church building and worshiping in a very different style than I had guessed. 

That Sunday is a moment that I will forever hold in my heart, as one where God met me in a moment of fear and exhaustion from the newness. God reminded me as I heard this familiar hymn in a different way, that he was still present. 

That's my prayer for us as a church in this season: that we may continue to hear God’s faithfulness as we try new things. That we may find ourselves worshipping God, or encountering the Triune God in a new way- surprised to hear a familiar tune of God’s goodness in even the most surprising of places. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.