Leaving Living Hope

I realized the other day that I have been talking more about where I’m at now, and didn’t really explain the leaving of Living Hope for St. Vincent.

It seemed as though we were going to be attending both churches for quite a while. I was going stir crazy not volunteering in anything since I had taken a break from volunteering for a while. I hadn’t wanted to start something when we seemed in transition, but I was beginning to feel as though I needed to do something again. So, I volunteered with the youth group at Living Hope, assuming that we weren’t going to be leaving Living Hope for a while.

Something I noticed was that as much as I appeared to be fighting the whole Orthodox thing, when it came to explaining the Orthodox church to our friends, I defended orthodoxy. I seemed to be a walking contradiction. On the one hand, when I was with orthodox people I argued against orthodox beliefs, and when I was with non-orthodox people, I defended those same beliefs. I think I needed to hear out loud both sides to figure out which one I truly agreed with. And, in some ways, I see both sides. I understand the arguments and the defences.

The deciding moment came when we had a Sunday full of baptisms and communion. First in the morning we had a baptism and the Eucharist at St. Vincent of Lerins, then in the evening we had a baptism and communion at Living Hope.

I’m just going to interject here, I found it interesting that most Sundays whatever was being talked about at St. Vincent seemed to go along with what was at Living Hope. I felt like we were getting the same ideas from two perspectives all the time. And I was wishing that people from both churches could hear what was going on at the other one.

About the baptisms and communion: At Living Hope the pastor gave a talk explaining very clearly the beliefs behind baptism and communion – how it is merely a ‘symbol’ of our faith. When we got home, Bruce told me that while he was okay with attending Living Hope still, he felt as though he couldn’t take communion there anymore. He believes that communion is much more than ‘just’ a symbol, and would be able to say that in his head at Living Hope when we took communion before. But once it was clearly spelled out about just being a symbol, he could no longer fool himself into believing that maybe the church viewed communion as something more. I understood where he was coming from. I’ve always thought baptism is more than we state – especially more than "putting on a team jersey." I have friends who have known for a while that that particular phrase drives me crazy ;-) And I’ve wondered about communion being more than we make it – but haven’t had any other teaching on it before participating at St. Vincent of Lerins.

So, I said once my commitments at Living Hope were done, we could say good bye and attend one church – St. Vincent’s. After talking with leadership, it was agreed that I could be released before the end of the school year, and it was actually quite soon after that we said our goodbyes. One thing we wanted to make sure of was that no one at Living Hope thought we were mad or disagreed with anyone there. We tried to make sure we didn’t "sneak out the back door." And I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I think everyone at Living Hope has been completely understanding and supportive. Especially when I’ve heard some stories of people who are currently trying to leave their Protestant church for the Orthodox church and are facing great opposition.

If anyone from Living Hope is reading this, thank you so much for your love and support. We love you very much.