I often look at my life and feel that I don’t have a home. I feel it physically—I find myself in Michigan with most of my family in Missouri. But more so I find theology as a sense of place seems to evade me. Maybe it started at that Methodist church on the gravel road. The church that never locked its doors because it was in the middle of nowhere. Safe. Now, I think it might also be because Methodists are some of the most welcoming Christians I have found.

Every year, our 4-H club would attend church together on a Sunday morning and a few times we worshiped at this church. I remember taking the Lord’s Supper there, and not thinking a thing about it. They did serve it a little differently. The pastor called it “Communion,” and asked believers to come forward to receive the bread and the grape juice. At my Southern Baptist church, we stayed in our pews, passing a plate of wafers then a plate of miniature plastic cups filled with grape juice. Without realizing it, I internalized the idea that it was an acceptable thing if believers didn’t do church the exact same way.

Yet there were more similarities than differences between that Methodist church up the road from me, and my own...

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