  About once every month or two, I'm plagued with a wave of guilt that I'm not raising the children with a church family. We used to have a very dedicated place in church. For years in college I worked as a youthgroup leader. Even after college we found a church in a Houston suburb that we loved... right up until we got pregnant with our first kid.
Then we found ourselves questioning the freakier of the church's values (values that are pretty ubiquitous here in Houston) such as the frequent statements against the National Endowment of the Arts, planned parenthood, strong women, and democrats. Primarily, we couldn't see raising our children in a church that kept women from equal participation, because we could never actively or passively teach our children that girls are somehow not as special and wonderful as boys. Additional problems, although not deal breakers, include that churches tend to have complicated bureaucratic organizational structures such as elders, laypeople, and committees. They vote on issues as if they were a democracy. Attending a new church usually involves standing up for some greeting time, which humiliates the hell out of me. Since we had kids, there's the added problem of churches that "strongly recommend" the kids leave for kid church during the message, and I'm not about to send my kids into a nursery on a visit, when I don't know the policy of hiring or acquiring volunteer workers.
Plus, I prefer to nurse my Ellie through a service anyway since she's still sketchy about strangers. John's always looking for good music, and I'm always looking for a critical approach to scripture, but we've even dropped our standards regarding this. Finally, we don't want to drive to the burbs for services, since one of our new urban-esque family values is to find community close to home. And who wants to spend nearly an hour each way on the road during the precious weekend? Sometimes I wonder, if the Catholic Church gave up its position on women being priests, if we would go to Catholic church (as anti-membership as we are, I hesitate to say join). John and I were both raised with Catholic families, but chose protestant for ourselves. When we attend with family now, there's a lot I still like about it. The ritual, the tradition, the family focus... I doubt we'll take a huge roll in a church now, even if we find one to frequent. We're avid travelers, on the road about half of the weekends of the year. I'm probably recreating my formative normal here, since my family attended church once or twice a month when I was young.
After all this, my guilt still takes me over. Even if I don't think a spiritual life is necessarily dependent on having a church, the church is a good focal point for spirituality. In its absence, we tend to lose our discipline and focus. Where should we go? What should I do? 
