My 8-year-old daughter is attempting to permanently take over our home computer. Webkinz must be destroyed.

She’s also moved on from the likes of “Dora The Explorer” and such, and now watches Disney programs like “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” and the one with Billy Ray Cyrus and his daughter.

My 3-year-old son often does whatever she does, so he’s been watching them, too. He can sing the “Suite Life” theme song. And last night he said to me, “Dad, I love Hannah Montana.”

I don’t know what that means, but I hope it’s a good thing.

Anyway, one thing I’ve been planning to write about recently was our decision to leave our church home for another, although I’m not sure this is going to be exactly what I initially intended it to be.

In short, we were not happy there, and despite our initial feelings, we felt that ourselves and this church were just not a good fit. One of the problems both my wife and I had was size - around 5,000 members, 10x our previous church in Alabama as well as our church before that here in Little Rock - which just made it difficult to really feel like part of a family. Another was the decision to build a new campus, which was going to end up costing in the 10’s of millions of dollars. Is it a wise use to spend that kind of money on yourselves? That’s a question many would debate. I was never comfortable with it, and it’s hard to feel at home when you’re uncomfortable.

There are a handful of other reasons we chose to part ways which I won’t detail here. One other motivation for the change, however, had to do with our heritage. Having spent the first 38+ years of my life in Churches of Christ, it certainly felt a little strange to be attending a church that was not of that background. We missed things like weekly communion and, despite my love of music, we missed four-part acappella singing from time to time as well.

This isn’t a perfect analogy, but it was similar to how we felt living in Alabama. There was a lot to like, but eventually we wanted to come back to Arkansas, which will always be home.

Granted, I do not want to be a part of the kind of Churches of Christ I knew growing up. I am glad I was where I was, and I came to faith in those churches. The folks in the church I grew up in were good people who loved the Lord and each other, and I’m thankful for so many of them who helped me grow spiritually in my younger years. But it was also rigid and legalistic in some ways, and at this point in my life I no longer am, nor do I want my children growing up in such an environment.

Still, there is much more that was good in where I’ve come from, and there are churches in my own tradition where I would feel at home. One of those is our new church (where my brother happens to be a shepherd.) We have been visiting them for the last couple of months, and we informed them just this week that we would like to become a part of the family there. We look forward the future and the plans God has for this group of believers. We know many of the people there already - some from having attended other CoC’s with them when we lived here before, others from having visited this same church two years ago when we first moved back, and a few from some other avenue of our lives. And, it’s significantly smaller - probably around 95% smaller - than where we’ve been recently.

But, perhaps more than anything, we wanted to truly feel like we were part of a family, and I don’t think we’ve truly felt that since we left Alabama two years ago this month.

So, that’s a short summary of our move. It’s not the Church of Christ I grew up in, but still it feels like we’re home again, where we belong.

And, I should point out that the people in the pictures on the church’s home page are actual members of the church, not professional models.