This is something I’ve been mulling over for several weeks but haven’t come to any big new conclusions or revelations. I’m wondering about the role of peers in church. I think we all have a certain expectation that a church should feel like our home. One way of making sure a church feels familiar and comfortable is to find a church populated by our peers. It certainly helps to find a church of the same variety or denomination we were raised in. Apart from that there are other factors that make a church group feel like our peers. What do the attendees look like? Do they resemble ethnicities we are used to interacting with? Are they from our socio-economic bracket? There are many factors that make the people we meet easier or harder to relate to. Something as simple as growing up during the same handful of years and watching the same television create a shared background. I find these factors increasingly relevant to the church project. It takes more effort to relate to the churches of predominantly black attendance. It takes more effort to relate to churches that speak another language during service. It takes more effort to relate to churches with members who have not had the financial privileges I’ve had. For me the project is partly about intentionally pushing myself beyond this boundary. I could stop at any of the churches I find full of the familiar. But I think I need to see more because there is more to be seen. I don’t see an ending yet, so I don’t know how this will all wrap up. I just know I don’t want to stop. Not yet.
I visit churches—I write about it.