Starting a home church

Here's a Craigslist ad that I just posted.  I figured I'd post it on my blog as well in case people use Google to find out about a home church in the Portland metropolitan (specifically Beaverton, Aloha or Hillsboro) area. I was Google-ing such a thing recently, but I found no such blog post! ;)

If you want to contact me after reading the following ad, please leave a comment or, even better, find the ad on the Portland Craigslist (search for "Starting a home church") and reply by email to that.  Thanks!

My husband and I just moved into the area, and we are interested in forming a small “home church.”  Please read on to get an idea of what we are imagining and to get to know us a bit better. J

For years, it has been challenging to find a church community that feels balanced and good.  We were attending OSU in Corvallis for the past six years, and it was just over a year ago that we finally found a church that worked for us.  What made the church work for us was that they genuinely loved and accepted people, were humble, and made every attempt to form a good community.  People often spent time together outside of the Sunday morning service, and we got to actually know people by eating meals and playing games together on Tuesday nights each week.

My husband just got a job in the Beaverton/Aloha area, and after moving here I have been distressed at the thought of finding a new church.  I have looked into all of the churches within a couple miles of us, and most of them are just too large for us.  It also seems like most smaller churches tend to lack people our age (we’re in our mid-twenties).

I have thought for a few years that perhaps an ideal church for us would be a small-ish group of people who meet at a home and get to know each other enough to form friendships and a genuine community.  We want to make friends here, and we want to appreciate a community of people who support each other with the love of God, and I feel so much more optimistic about forming this group rather than trying to make things work when in big churches.

What we are imagining is meeting regularly (although it doesn’t have to be Sunday morning necessarily) to have some kind of structured meeting where we discuss thoughts about God/the Bible/etc, pray, and do some sort of music.  In addition to the meeting, I think it would be great to regularly share a meal together and play games/socialize.  We could also get together to volunteer if interest is there.  All of this can be done in a variety of ways, and I have ideas and would be happy to organize things; however, I want to leave things open for other peoples’ ideas as well!  One thing that I’ve been hoping is that our community could be relatively close in proximity so that we minimize travel.  We live near the intersection of NW Quatama Rd and NW 205^th Ave in Aloha.  Also, we’d be happy to host people at our home, but we’re open to having it elsewhere or to rotate, etc.

If this is sounding appealing, read on, and I’ll let you know a little bit more about myself and my husband.

Matthew and I both went to OSU for our undergraduate and graduate work.  Matthew is a mechanical engineer, and I am a mathematician/math teacher.  Matthew currently is working, and I’m going to apply winter term to be in the part-time pool for teaching math at Portland Community College.  We are both quite shy and introverted, but we’re friendly, good listeners, and I’ll open up a fair amount if you get to know me.  (Matthew might open up too, if you’re lucky!  He’s quiet…)  Regarding our faith, over the past few years we have become less than enchanted by the current beliefs held by the majority of churches.  We’re interested in truth, but we have realized that churches don’t have as much claim to the truth as they think they do, and it feels like pride and legalism have taken the place of humility and love.  People seem to wear masks to hide their true human selves.  For this reason, we feel unable to be ourselves when in most church settings.  We have rebuilt our relationship with God by focusing on the compassion, love and grace of God for this imperfect, hurting world.  Another important aspect of our life is our goal to live simply in an effort to take better care of the world God gave us, to fight materialism, and to promote social justice.  We do things like try to spend our money with socially responsible companies, make our own food from scratch, avoid packaging waste, and many other things.  We have been analyzing all that we do to try to match our actions to our values.

In general, one or both of us enjoy having good discussions, hiking, walking, running, cooking/baking, crafting (sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc.), reading, going to farms for u-pick produce, canning, playing online RPGs (that’d be Matthew…), singing, music, and other things!

If you too are looking for a close community and our story speaks to you, please send me an email!  I’d love to learn about who you are and what your hopes for the group would be!  Questions are encouraged as well, of course!  We’re hoping to meet some people in our age group (20-40 ?), but if you feel like this is perfect for you and you’re not in the range, don’t let that deter you.  If things seem to click well enough, we’d probably set up a meeting outside the home for a bit, and then hopefully eventually bring it into the home.