We checked out a few different churches while we were deciding on where to make our home church. We visited CCAC since that is where Anson’s parents go, but we knew early on that it didn’t make sense to drive an hour to church each week. We also went to New Life Church since it was my home church for a year before we got married and Aaron and his family go there. It is 30 mins away and is doable…but I think still a little far in order to maintain community. We visited Christ Our Redeemer PCA which is in Camarillo at the local high school. We had good conversations with Cal and Bora. Though not an absolute red flag the way they conduct service is not something we’re used to. We also visited Pleasant Valley Baptist Church which was really close to us (5 min drive?). I liked the worship and the preaching, and a couple was very nice to us and they also had small groups/Bible study after service. This was a semi-contender as it was a nice local community. It seemed pretty established and I wasn’t too sure how we would be able to serve.

Throughout our visits to different churches, we kept coming back to Chinese Christian Church of Thousand Oaks. We liked that it was a smaller sized congregation, the expository preaching style (Pastor Steve has incepted our thoughts), recognizable worship songs, and Elder Wayne was very friendly and gave us a tour on our first visit. Some things that I may need some time to get used to is all the women leading worship (not enough guys with ability or desire to lead?), not having to be a member in order to be part of small groups, etc. Pastor Tim is relatively new in his role as the English pastor, so I know that it takes time to grow into the role and have the church change when there have been things just done for years.

We visited a few of their small groups: New Heritage (mostly retired folks), New Legacy (those w/ middle school to college aged children), and Semi Pro & Hungry (single and married w/o kids). We plan to visit CAMTO in the next month and that group mainly consists of those with young kids). It looks like we’re more comfortable being in Semi Pro as we like the discussions and teaching and it being more Biblically oriented rather than topical and it is easier to have conversations as it is a smaller group and doesn’t have as many disruptions where there are many kids. Regardless of which SG we attend, it does look like we have decided to make CCCTO our home church and have completed their 1st membership class last month. We’ll be taking the 2nd one next week and applying afterwards. Hopefully we will be able to serve and help the church.