[This is the final part of a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here and Part 5 here.]

December: God is full of surprises. With an Italian couple from the Crazy Bible Study, I’ve been attending the local Catholic church. It is here where I’ve found –for the first time since I left Toronto, and flying obscenely in the face of my 22 years of good Lutheran upbringing– reverence for the God who gives and takes away.

The people who attend are not all white, and not all couples, and not averse to talking to strangers. Worship is steeped deeply in scripture, and it is beautiful to know that every other Catholic on the planet that Sunday is reading the same passages.

The mystery of God, for what seems like the first time, is considered, meditated-upon and basked-in. And, when I come for after-church coffee, and find that they all look like they just fluttered in from the cold, to seek solace in a house of prayer, I find that God smiles, then laughs, shakes my face and says, “I am with you; you are home.”

[This is the fifth in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.]

November: My Canadian friends point me to the other Christian student group, and when I email them for info, they invite me to a weekly Bible study. I am tired of being a newb, but I go because there is promise of homecooked Italian food.

I’ve come to call it the Crazy Bible Study. It’s a mess. People attend and drop out again. Catholics are mixed haphazardly with Proddies. I hear that even Muslims who want to learn more about the Bible have been known to attend. Denominations aside, the members of the Crazy Bible Study don’t fit together and don’t always even like each other.

There’s an old Catholic who likes to talk about how the Lord will rain fire and brimstone on Amsterdam one day. The German New Testament PhD student in the group likes to toss around words like “exegesis” but has about as much charm as a piece of lint. And one girl in the group always has the same prayer request, which is that God would return to her the lying boyfriend who beats her up.

But there is Jesus’ promise that when two or three people in the Crazy Bible Study pray together, he is with us, so I come back the next week and the week after. Slowly and with small steps, Love is eeked out in an unforgiving city. We share a big yummy pot of sauerkraut with the kind Hungarian couple who lead the group.

I offer the girl with the abusive boyfriend dinner and a movie after he’s kicked her out of his place again, and the relief on her face warms my little apartment like a fire. Fire-and-brimstone-guy takes us on a late-night bicycle tour of the Christian landmarks of the old city core, and we touch history. In the mess, God smiles, then laughs, shakes my face and tells me that I am home.

[This is the fourth in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.]

October: A connection from a Christian friend in Canada leads me to a wonderful Canadian couple, scientists like myself, who point me to the Vineyard. Like the Hip Church, the Vineyard comes from outside the Netherlands and about half their service is in English.

Everything about the Vineyard is user-friendly: the songs are musically simple, people dress however they want, and if you have questions about Salvation, you can buy a book about it from the table near the front. If you want to wave a banner or let your kids dance in the aisle, you can do that too.

But don’t get too meditative, because there’s another coffee break coming up. They love them some coffee breaks at the V —in fact, even the welcome package and worship CD they send to new members includes a postcard which shows a big steaming cup of coffee.

I come back a few weeks, but quickly come to dread the coffee breaks. To get coffee at the V means standing in line for fifteen minutes, and not only will nobody talk to me, people actually cut in front of me to get to the precious juice faster.

An attempt to make small talk with people in line next to me falls flat. Somehow I get myself introduced to the guy in charge of translating sermons to English, but when the sermon starts, and he starts translating, we draw angry glares from the people around us.

So I’ve got mixed feelings about The Coffee Shop Church. They try so hard, and they are sincere about worship. But I feel like I’m at Starbucks: the barristas are perky enough, as long as you don’t piss them off.

I’m tired of coffee. I crave real meals and friendship. I miss my Toronto small group, a circle of trust that became my solace when life in the cold city got rough, where we helped each other out when broke or lonely or overwhelmed by school, where we inspired each other.

My Toronto friends were fun and cool, artists and musicians and academics, my family away from home — and sometimes I’m angry that God pulled me out that group. It is hard to make a home in a strange place, and it is even harder to squeeze my own Story into a church that didn’t know I was coming and doesn’t need my help.

In line at a bureaucratic office to register my address, I find myself surrounded by immigrants to the Netherlands, little families from Morocco and Turkey and Russia who are trying to make a life in the beautiful mess of the New Europe.

I have an unexpected encounter with Jesus, who reminds me that he, too, was an outsider, a guest, and a traveler. That YHWH has a thing for sending people to foreign places. That God, in fact, seems to like Places the way he likes People.

In the mess, God smiles, then laughs, shakes my face and tells me that I am home. “Live here,” he tells me. “Make a home here and pray for this place, for it is Mine, as you are Mine.”

I used to be a leader and a beloved member in a Toronto community, and despite my European passport, I am now another immigrant standing in a line, a shy stranger awkwardly holding my coffee. To be an immigrant is to be weak, to get lost in winding streets, and to be alone. But it is in weakness that we are strong, Jesus says.

“And now,” echoes the Apostle (1 Cor 12:31, and onwards), “I show you a better way.”

[This is the third in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.]

September: With the beginning of the academic year, the two existing Christian groups at the university reconvene, and because they have a better advertising campaign, I hit up the weekly worship service run by the Ecumenical Student Union.

They worship in one of the original 5 churches around which my town was built, renting the old building from the Dutch Reformed church, which has no congregation to fill it.

The music is beautiful because it’s made by academics who study music. The sermons – though Dutch – are more or less understandable. Generally, the message is something true and inoffensive, like that being friendly is good and that lying is bad. It feels like a gathering of academics who all agree that the Bible is a nice text to discuss once a week.

The end of the service is a familiar game: people who know each other chat, people who feel they have fulfilled the weekly requirement book it out of there, and there is no reason for anyone to approach a newbie, because there is, really, nothing to say.

It is the Bendable Church: pleasing everybody, changing nobody. Once I’m chatted up by an administrator and when I let on a little bit about what God has done in my life, he looks at me like I’ve just spoken in tongues, and I get the feeling that he’s looking for a reason to leave. Again, I’m left empty and with no real reason to take root in this community.

[This is the second in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here.]

August: There is a hip, young church plant in Amsterdam, the project of a group of Americans who decided a few years ago to bring the Emergent Thing to Sin City. They have a band and the people who attend are young and good looking, and during worship people raise their hands sometimes, and the pastors wear jeans and hoodies.

I go a few times, to attend worship and, in the summer, a church picnic in the park. People chat with me off and on and it’s a relief to be able to speak English, but I’m new and spend a lot of time feeling like a new kid at school, invited and included because it’s the right thing to do, not because I’m wanted.

Do you know what it’s like to stand alone at church with your cup of coffee? It’s amazing how fast it happens, the collapse of your confidence: you walk in thinking you might have a story to bring, and in seconds, you forget it all.

You look around and realize that they already have a few late-twenties, kinda-pretty / kinda-smart girls, and that everyone there is already friends with one another. You try but can’t think of any reason why you should be butting in on their party, and you decide that you wouldn’t talk to you either, because they are fine without you; you are not needed, and only half-heartedly wanted. What are you doing here? Why are you begging these people to be your friends? Every second is a struggle not to run away.

Much about this young church in Amsterdam is admirable: they bring cookies and friendship to the Ladies in the Red Light District, they pray for Amsterdam, they build bridges between Americans and the Dutch. They love doing church. And yet, The Hip Church just doesn’t seem like the way to go either.

I know that if I attend enough parties and picnics, I can eventually charm my way into the group and meet a lot of people in their twenties, be greeted by name, maybe develop a crush on one of the guys in the band, crawl slowly from the out-group to the in-group.

It’s a social game, but somehow my own relationship with Jesus seems so different from this that I soon stop making the weekly trek to Amsterdam, and stay home, comfortably alone with my Bible.

A little over six months ago, I left my life in Toronto behind and moved to the Netherlands. I’ve been less than successful in my search for Christian community in my new home, but the journey’s been interesting and humbling – and in the process I’ve learned a few things about the nature of church and the difficulty of community.

July: I start by randomly picking a church from a Google search, a Dutch Reformed Church close to my house. I drop in on their Sunday afternoon service, and though I understand almost nothing of the sermon, the clean, simple sanctuary and service are a comforting respite from my first week in a strange country.

Maybe it is my nose ring that makes me stick out enough for the Pastor’s wife to approach me after the service, and she introduces me to the closest “young people” she can find, a group of high school-age boys (I’m 28). They are struggling to speak English for my sake, and it’s uncomfortable to sense that they want out of this conversation and back to their regular conversation, and it’s a relief when I put an end to it and excuse myself.

Before I leave, a church administrator flags me down and asks me if I want to become a “temporary member” – a pseudo commitment that, as far as I can tell, boils down to getting on the church email list.

Figuring that participation in church events and ministry is a better way to get to know people than awkward coffee talk, I sign up, and a few days later I get an email requesting all kinds of information about me: my address, my phone number, my job, my previous church, etc., with a promise to be introduced to the congregation two Sundays later.

What I don’t know is that I will have to stand up and be stared at for the first 10 minutes of the service, and that my name, address, and biography will be printed on the front of the worship bulletin.

For a nation of reserved, somewhat-awkward people, they sure know how to embarrass a reserved, somewhat-awkward new person. Afterwards, everyone stares at me, and nobody talks to me.

The introduction makes me want to crawl into a deep hole, but despite the fanfare, I can’t seem to make it past the email list. I come back a few more times, each time standing around alone with my coffee cup, feeling like a fool with nobody to talk to, and too shy to butt in on existing conversations when I still can’t really formulate a complete sentence in Dutch.

I’d like to participate in church activities, except that there aren’t any. And this is how I’ve come to think of this church of as the Brittle Church: entrenched in tradition, comfortable in the way things are, they’d like to welcome outsiders, but end up scaring them away. Busy with the upkeep of the church itself, nobody seems to have any ideas or initiative for ministries. Though eager to bring in new people, nobody wants to stretch enough out of their element to talk to them.

[This is the first in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. Keep your feed reader locked in on empireremixed.com/blog for updates.]