It’s been a year since my husband and I moved to Santa Barbara from Charlottesville, Virginia. For Jason, the move meant coming home to the city where he’d grown up; for me, it meant finding a new home in California. One of our first questions even before arriving in Santa Barbara was where we could find Christian community.  Jason and I are introverts, and it takes time for us to jump into new situations and seek out relationships. In my experience, church has been no exception. It often feels daunting to try to break into already established circles of Christian friends. Still, we were filled with anticipation when we decided to seek out community at Christ Presbyterian, an unassuming Reformed church situated on the corner of Victoria and Anacapa.

We’ve just returned home from church, I’ve finally succeeded in putting an overtired Fiona down for a nap, and I find myself sitting here with a cup of tea, pondering our year with this beautiful community of believers we call Christ Presbyterian.

Like most newcomers, we experienced moments of awkwardness this year, as we looked around and considered whether we could flourish and find community in our new home and church. Sometimes we were overwhelmed and disoriented by seeing the intimacy between people at Christ Presbyterian—no doubt nurtured over years—and remembering relationships we’d left behind. At times, we wanted to flee to the familiar.

Even in those times, however, God was drawing us closer to him and into community with those around us through a shared worship experience on Sunday mornings. Together with many of you each week, we have sung beautiful, Psalm-inspired songs to God, confessed our failures and looked to Christ for comfort, heard scripture passages read aloud, listened to what God has to say to us through his Word, and participated in the sacrament of communion. Structured worship services, I am learning, have an essential role in building relationships in the church. I haven’t always understood that the people sitting around me on a given Sunday are not just fellow attendees or observers, but rather essential participants with me in corporate worship as God intended it.

Of course, it’s often the informal, day to day encounters between God’s people that form community. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share a few of those encounters with you—the kinds of encounters that may seem so ordinary as to go unnoticed yet which God has used to reassure me and Jason of his good plans for us in Santa Barbara. I hope it will encourage those of you who have shown loving hospitality to us and to many others, as well as those of you who are yearning to find community or who may be weary of feeling like an outsider.

I remember arriving that first Sunday with Fiona in tow and peaking apprehensively into the nursery, wondering whether to drop her off there. Debbie Corazza quickly approached us with a warm smile and expressed sincere interest in our family. She was one of our first greeters at Christ Presbyterian Church and made us feel immediately at ease. She comes to mind as I reflect upon this year, because she has a unique gift for making you feel comfortable and valued in her presence. She showed special kindness to me when I confided in her during a difficult situation this summer. Debbie wasn’t the only one who greeted us that first visit; several folks in the “family section” welcomed us warmly, and we remember.

Fiona quickly seemed to feel at home in the nursery. Half the battle was making her uptight first-time parents feel comfortable with the nursery. Tawny Kilpper was working the nursery the first Sunday we visited. That Sunday, and many after, she has shown affection for our little girl and worked to make the nursery a place where she and other children can thrive. I imagine you could lose track of the times Tawny painstakingly has rearranged the nursery to make it work better for children and parents. In those moments when Jason and I have caught a glimpse of Fiona trying to crawl into Tawny’s lap, laughing over a ladybug book with Isabel Beveridge, and enjoying the attention of a number of gracious nursery volunteers, we have felt thankful that Fiona too is finding community here.

Indeed there are few things that can speak to the hearts of parents more than demonstrating affection for their child. I can picture Joyce Berg relieving parents’ tired arms, whisking Fiona and other babies around the sanctuary with complete ease, and our pastor, Kyle Wells, attempting with silly faces to elicit a laugh out of our sometimes overly serious baby. On multiple occasions, Brooke Dickinson has taken babysitting as an opportunity to engage Fiona through singing, dancing, and reading. Our friend John Werner beams at the three of us every week and reminds us how richly God blessed us when he entrusted a daughter to us, just as God blessed him with his own beloved daughter.

Our first official dinner invitation came from Elaine and Richard Jacobsen. They served us pasta and wine, asked us about ourselves, and made a couple of shy newcomers feel at home—even rolling out the baby-friendly play carpet for Fiona. I left their home pondering the nature of Christian hospitality. I remember how enlivened we were by conversations over dinner with Kyle and Pam Wells and Jesse and Holly Covington. Those were some of our first encounters with men and women at Christ Presbyterian, but we have since received invitations from other members for fellowship, and we have been blessed by their generosity.

I am excited by the lovely, engaging women I am getting to know and pray that I will deepen in my resolve to pursue meaningful relationships with those women this year. This summer I began attending the women’s small group on Thursday mornings. Joining that small group probably was the most important step for me in connecting to our church family. God has used some lovely women at Christ Presbyterian to minister to my heart during small group discussions, during both light-hearted and intimate conversations afterward, on caffeinated stroller walks, and over relaxed dinners out.

God led our family to Christ Presbyterian and graciously answered our prayers to find friendship and belonging in our new home. We are looking forward to deepening relationships and getting to know others of you who congregate with us each week. We realize that there are more awkward moments ahead—especially as we really get to know each other—and that no community of sinners can be perfect, but we are thankful to be here and desire to learn with you how to live out the gospel of Christ in community.