A week ago, we tried church #2, which was actually a church plant of church #1. The church, still in its early stages, is held in an elementary school about 10 minutes south of our house. We got there a few minutes before the service and walked into the school cafeteria/auditorium and sat on some benches. The worship team was still practicing, and there were little kids running around. Some older people were sitting on the benches, and looked at us when we walked in, but no one approached us. We sat down on a bench in the back.
Finally, an older lady came up to us, hugged us, and said welcome. As she started to walk away, I asked what her name was. She told me her name and said, “I’m Pastor ____’s mom.”

“I don’t know who Pastor ____ is–it’s our first time here.”

“Your first time! Great!” She turned to a man next to her. “Come meet these people. It’s their first time here.” As she said that, the woman in front of us turned around, smiled at us, and then turned back around. She heard that it was our first time there–and seemed really welcoming to other regulars there throughout the service, but did not introduce herself. Anyway, the man introduced himself to us, and as soon as our attention was turned to him, the first woman walked away without even finding out what our names were. We exchanged names with the man, told him how we found out about the church, and then he walked away. Okaaayy. Right before the service started, the pastor came over, shook our hands and said welcome, and then walked away without asking us our names or anything else.

So that was all before church. Here are my observations about the rest of the service:

PROS: Great ministry goals to help the homeless and prostitute population in the area; Very laidback, casual service, probably because the congregation numbers about 30-40 people

CONS: Preaching was so-so; The congregation was not as diverse as we had hoped for, especially in that community (the congregation was about 50% black and 50% white); Of the people in attendance, we only saw one other couple who were possibly in our age range

We both agreed that we would be OK with not going back, mostly because we would like a more established church and one with more people in our age range. And from this visit, Matt later told me that he realized that he would like to attend a church where there are some Asians. Definitely not a predominantly Asian church, but one where there are at least some. I also feel like there are some churches where there are Asians, but there are so few of them that people set you apart as an Asian (for example, if we’re talking to someone, they might tell us about another couple that is Chinese). It’ll be hard to find something like our old church where the ethnicities just seemed to blur together, mostly because there were so many cultures and so many mixed marriages.

But what happens if we can’t find one that has that–and everything else we’re looking for? What is our priority?