When our small church disbanded in the summer of 2008, we sensed God's direction to spend a year or so visiting churches in a roughly 30-mile radius of our home. Our ultimate goal was to find a new church home. Along the way, we wanted to visit old friends who, over the years, had moved on to other churches. More deeply, we wanted to take the time to see firsthand what God might be doing in the larger body of Christ in our area and how he might speak to us there.

There was a lot to see! In the course of visiting 26 churches in our area, several more than once, plus eight other churches further afield, we encountered some very pleasant surprises, and we also faced some less pleasant situations. In this article we share some of these experiences, plus mention some of the perspectives that we gained in the course of making these visits.

New Perspectives? Not Easy!

On a recent trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, a city of over 600,000, we noticed that there were no limited-access highways through ...