The discussion on "community" at the annual meeting last month really got me thinking. Why do we come to church? Why do we come specifically to St. Augustine? There are probably as many answers to those questions as there are members of St. Augustine. For many of us, though, a large part of the answer is that we are searching for community - a sense of belonging. We want someplace to be, and a reason for being there.

Becoming an active church member has not been easy for me. Few of my friends outside of St. Augustine attend church. I come from a family of non-churchgoers, some of whom are quite surprised and even distressed that I have become an active member of a Christian church. It seems in our society that there just aren't that many young couples (or young singles, for that matter) who are interested in church.

At St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Massachusetts, where my husband Luke and I first became acquainted with and quickly became "sold" on Episcopalianism, we were one of a handful of couples under the age of 50. Although St. Paul's in Holyoke is a wonderful place, we nevertheless felt somewhat out of place owing to the lack of people our own age. In our mid-twenties, we were about forty years younger than the average member there.

For me, that's what makes the 20s and 30s group such a great idea. Many non-churchgoers in our age group have a tendency to assume that ALL Christians are of the same political, social, and religious stripe as the bizarre evangelical minority which has flooded the mainstream media with their prescriptive "message." We are fortunate to have a robust number of members in their 20s and 30s, and the group provides a "safe haven" of peers to whom one need not explain or defend one's religious practices.