What if I haven't been to church in years?

People stop going for all sorts of reasons. Some moved and never found another one. Some got busy in a season and the habit simply ended. Some were hurt by a church, or by someone in one, and stopping was the healthy decision at the time.

If your gap was the last kind, the thing you are probably bracing for is a conversation where you are gently interrogated. That is not going to happen. There is no exit interview and no re entry process. You walk in and sit down like anyone else.

You may find that the format has changed since you last went. Most contemporary churches now run around 70 minutes, with a band rather than an organ, words on a screen rather than hymnals, and no expectation about clothing. If your reference point is a service from twenty years ago, the shape will be familiar but the texture will be different.

Something worth knowing is that Ps. Sam has been publicly honest from the stage about his own struggle, including a panic attack that put him in an emergency room in San Francisco and the years he spent thinking that was not allowed to happen to a pastor. This is not a church that runs on everyone appearing fine. If part of why you left was that the performance got exhausting, that is a thing we have actually talked about out loud.

Come once. If it is not right, you have lost 70 minutes on a Sunday and nobody will chase you.