jamie y. watkins

Category: Church & Faith

  • Seeking Community: Presbyterian Church

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    jywatkins
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    Last Sunday, Chad and I went to the Presbyterian Church in our town. It is in our town, but it’s on the other side of the state highway, so I always forget that that part of town is still actually in our town. Anyway. This was a cute church. The little sanctuary was small and…

  • Seeking Community: Evangelical Free Church

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    jywatkins
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    Just over a year ago, Chad and I, and the rest of our community, lost our church. It was a satellite location of a larger evangelical church that I had attended for several years. We set up our small satellite community in an elementary school every Sunday morning, held a worship service, children’s church, and…

  • Seeking Community: Episcopal Church

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    jywatkins
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    A couple weeks ago, Chad and I continued our church visits by attending the local Episcopal church. I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about some evangelical Christians who have been attending Episcopal churches, drawn in by the liturgy and tradition. Rachel Held Evans wrote a beautiful, poetic piece about the community and the sacredness of…

  • Seeking Community: United Methodist Churches

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    jywatkins
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    I’m catching up on our church-visit posts. Chad and I attended two United Methodist Churches in November (not two Sundays in a row, since we interrupted our church visits with a ten-day trip to Norway). The first UMC we attended is in the neighboring town where we used to live. We used to pass this…

  • It’s Not About the Building

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    jywatkins
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    I love debating the topic of church buildings because I can see the merits of both sides. I like discussions with no right answer. I think it leads to much deeper conversation and shows the layers and complexities of our world and the ways in which we relate to God. So let’s talk about the…

  • Norway: Finding Peace in “Forgive Us”

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    jywatkins
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    I chose just the right book to read on vacation to accompany our theme of peace and to align with our visit to the Nobel Peace Center. Reflecting back on my post about the laureates, the one thing I didn’t mention in my (ever-changing, evolving) definition of peace is forgiveness and lament. Forgive Us: Confessions…

  • Seeking Community: Lutheran Church

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    jywatkins
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    It’s been a couple weeks since we visited our local Lutheran Church, but right after I left for a business trip and then had visitors for my birthday… so we’ve had a couple Sundays off since this visit. I still want to chronicle it, though. I don’t know where my lofty ideas of Lutherans came…

  • Seeking Community: Bible Fellowship

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    jywatkins
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    For our third church visit, this past Sunday, Chad and I visited a Bible Fellowship Church just a couple minutes from our house. Like the Mennonite church we visited a few weeks ago, this church was small and friendly, about 30 people at the service.  Unlike the Mennonite church, it was not very diverse, but…

  • Seeking Community: Assembly of God

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    jywatkins
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    I wrote last week about our visit to a Mennonite church as the first step in a process of finding a new church community. I’m going to try to record my thoughts about each of our church visits. Our second visit was to an Assembly of God church just down the street. We’re staying local…

  • Seeking Community: Mennonite Church

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    jywatkins
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    Chad and I are in search of a church community. It’s been almost a year since our small church community disbanded, and we’re finally feeling strong enough to start looking for something new. We have a lot of ideas and a lot of opinions, and that’s good and bad. We know we want a small…