I don’t attend church. And I haven’t attended church in years.

Currently, I live right in the heart of Chicago: a block off Michigan Avenue and across the street from the Hancock building. And there are dozens of churches within walking distance from my apartment. One day I realized that I had not stepped foot into a single one since moving here a few years ago. Which is strange because whenever I travel, visiting churches is near the top of my list of sights to see.

I’m a bit of an amateur photographer (although I have been hired out a few times for events), but since moving here, I have been drawn to capturing urban landscapes and street photography. You can probably imagine that Chicago has provided me with more material than I could exhaust in a lifetime.

So I had an idea. I could take photos of all of the historical churches in the city and perhaps create a book of my photos of the churches around here. But that sparked another idea instead. Since I would want the opportunity to get inside to see the sanctuaries, I thought it might be fun to actually go to a Sunday service at each of these churches.

After all, there was a day when I had enjoyed going to church. 

Growing up, every Sunday our family went to the United Methodist Church in Evanston, Illinois, right outside of Chicago. My dad had grown up Methodist in rural Minnesota, and my mom grew up Catholic. But at some time, long before I was born, she left the church and had some very negative feelings about her experience. But she never spoke about it, so I don’t know exactly what happened that turned her away. But I do know that the Methodist church became one of the most important areas of her life.

Let me go back. We went to church every Sunday in Evanston until I was 11 years old. Then my dad was transferred for work to St. Louis, so we picked up and moved there. I can remember my dad shopping around for a church for months. When he finally found one that satisfied his expectations, he took my mom, my sister, and I as a family. And that was the last time my dad set foot in a church.

For the rest of my childhood and whenever I came back from college, we attended the United Methodist Church in University City, just one town over from where we lived in St. Louis. This turned out to be great for me because it provided me with an entirely new friend group separate from my friends from the neighborhood or from school.

I loved going to church. I loved my church. Every Sunday, my younger sister and I would be dropped off at 8 AM for bell choir practice. Yes, bell choir.  We played handbells. Maybe once a month we would perform at the service, but once a year, we played our big performance during the Christmas service. And the piece that we played for Christmas would be arranged by our choir leader, transcribed on chalk boards that ran along the walls in the basement of the church, and memorized by those of us in the choir. We would play these songs with no music. These pieces were always remarkably sophisticated, now that I look back on it. Each of us was responsible for three or four bells (notes), which required picking up the right bell at the right time, in addition to knowing when to ring each one. The music included a melody line and complicated chords, with changes in keys and in meter.  Practices would intensify as we got closer to Christmas, and nerves would fray as a bunch of teenagers tried to memorize the piece. But we always did.

After bell choir practice, we would all file upstairs to the sanctuary for the church service, where our parents would already be gathered with the other congregants. For many years, we had this one minister whose son was a “hippie.” That’s what we called him. He was in his twenties and must have lived out of town for he only attended periodically. He had long, silky hair, and wore jeans and t-shirts to church. I thought he was the coolest. But I was completely intimidated by him and don’t think I ever spoke a word to him. But he did set a mood. And for those years, no one cared if us teenagers wore jeans to church.That was also cool. It’s funny how such a little thing can make such a lifelong impression.

Halfway through the service would be the children’s sermon. Children 12 and under, who would be sitting with our parents, would go sit on the stairs to the altar as someone from the church would sit among us to wax words of wisdom. After that, the children would file out to go to Sunday School. Once I hit 13 years old, I was able to sit with all of the other teenagers in the first few pews and would remain with the rest of the adults for the entire service.

I must confess that I wasn’t a very devout congregant. When sitting with all my friends, I spent most Sundays writing notes back and forth. In the back of each pew was, of course, the rack holding the hymnals. But there was also a little wooden compartment that held donation envelopes and little golfer’s pencils. They were perfect for transmitting messages to make fun of things with my sister, flirt with a cute boy, or make plans to get together. Believe it or not, I still have some of these notes stored away in a box of childhood things that my mom sent me years ago!

After the service was coffee time. This was when parents mingled with each other and caught up on the previous week. And you could always count on donuts at coffee time. So typically, I would grab a glazed donut and then return to the basement for youth choir practice. We would be finished at about noon, and then would all go home for a few hours.

Around 4 PM, the teenagers would return for Youth Group. This is where many friendships were nurtured, friendships that meant a lot to me. I liked the fact that none of my friends from school knew any of these friends. I’m not sure why. I guess it was like I was leading a whole different life on Sundays. The rough schedule for Sunday nights was free time from 4-6, dinner at 6, and program at 7. We would finish at 8.

Free time was spent playing touch football, foosball, or ping pong. Or maybe it was spent catching up and gossiping. And because we also would put on little shows with SNL-type sketches, we might be writing skits or practicing them. 

Each family took turns being in charge of dinner. The basement had a kitchen, and the assigned family would prepare dinner for the entire youth group. And the program would be a wide variety of things. It could be the minister coming to speak with us or it could be a guest speaker, a movie, or a workshop.

We repeated this every Sunday. And I absolutely loved going. I loved everything about it. It was a community, a fellowship. It was friendship. It was working together and playing together. We went on retreats and on missionaries. We hosted and manned the dunking booth at the yearly street fair in the neighborhood. We went on float trips and had picnics. 

Church was a huge part of my life.

After graduating from college, I lived at home for a year as I got myself settled in a job and saved up some money for an apartment. I attended church with my mom a few times here and there. By this time, as an empty nester, church had become the single most important part of her life. She belonged to all of the organizations and volunteered in the front office. She belonged to a birthday club, where she was the youngest member by decades. She hosted huge church parties at our house. These were her best friends. One of the times I went with her to church, I vaguely recognized one of the ushers who was close to my age. His brother had been in the youth group, but he wasn’t. And turned out we attended the same university, so I may have met him a time or two there. We chatted, he asked me out, and we ultimately dated for four years. However, we never returned to church. Oddly, he never wanted to go back, which made no sense since he had been attending for months as an usher.

Eventually, I moved to Los Angeles and broke up with him. And church was nowhere on my radar. In fact, even when I had children, I had no interest in returning to church. But I was conflicted. I wished that my kids could have the same positive experience I had with church. I just couldn’t find anywhere that measured up for me. So we never attended church. Instead, I enrolled them in religious schools – a poor substitute.

And that was also complicated. My daughter and son went to a Baptist school through 5th grade and then a Catholic school from 6th through 12th. I think I may have unintentionally turned them both into atheists! The disdain that the two religions had for each other rightfully did not sit well with them. 

Strangely enough, I found myself needing a job when my daughter was in middle school, and it turned out that they were hiring. So I did teach at their Catholic school for a few years. (Yes, they hired me even though I was not Catholic. Or even religious.) As part of that job, I was required to attend mass. But I hadn’t been to a Catholic mass since my best friend got her first communion. And remarkably, my eight-year-old self was turned off by the religion because anyone not Catholic wasn’t allowed to take communion. Our Methodist church didn’t have such a requirement, and that bothered me. 

This particular Catholic school was not connected to a parish, so mass was held in the gym. Eleven- to fourteen-year-old students and teachers sat on bleachers set up for a basketball game while the priest led mass under one of the basketball hoops. It was a very strange experience, one that didn’t inspire reverence, especially as most teachers spent the service shushing students or marching around to locate those talking and sending them to the dean. When they weren’t scolding students, they themselves were scrolling social media and gossiping with each other. 

But that’s it for my experience with church in the past thirty years.

As I thought about visiting dozens of church services here in Chicago, I realized that I might actually learn a thing or two from the traditions that I participate in and the sermons I hear. Who knows what kind of spiritual journey this could take me on! 

I may not be religious, but I have opinions about organized religion, both positive and negative. But either way, I am a fierce defender of those who find organized religion as central to their lives. And I’m understanding of the immense importance the role religion has played for individuals, for the community, and frankly for the world.

I’m excited, nervous, anticipatory. And curious. I cannot wait to see where this project leads.

I’ll post the first church here on this blog, but then after that, I am going to move this project over to Substack. You can follow me there for free weekly essays about Sunday’s church visits. Just click HERE to subscribe for free.

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