Now that I’m caught up with Sunday visits, I think I’ll try to post some midweek thoughts about churches in general, The Church, my own ridiculousness, and anything else that seems relevant. Some of it might be serious, but mostly not. It’s good to write again, even for an audience of ten.
- You know how places like classrooms and meeting rooms and churches have unwritten but rigid seating charts? That’s another anxiety of mine—am I sitting in someone’s seat? One Sunday, I was quite sure we were doing just that. They stopped, they stared, they looked around, puzzled. What is happening to my WORLD? they seemed to think. They stumbled blindly to another seat, disoriented, and sang all the songs half a beat late. Sorry, people who usually sit there.
- A friend wrote this comment on a satirical link I posted about introverts in church: Have you seen the new blog by the Berrien County Ministerial Alliance? Yeah, every week a different minister/preacher/pastor posts about this church shopping couple that's making the rounds. They rate the couple on a scale of 1-10. What I’ve noticed is that the couple keeps getting dinged a few points because of the wife’s introversion.
I recently read an article about why people always sit in the same section of the same pew every week, sit at the same lunch table at work or school, claim the same area of the floor during gym workouts. The reason for this, the article said, was because out of so many choices throughout the day or week, by choosing the same seat or place, there is one less choice to make. Makes sense to me. I have found that when someone is in "my spot" I have the opportunity to experience things from a different perspective. You see, "my people" are still sitting in " their spots" so the same message can have a different dinamic just by sitting somewhere else! Adventuresome!!
ReplyDeleteI love this outlook. Sometimes being just a tiny bit uncomfortable is good.
DeleteWe're like cows to our own stalls. *smile* To defend it, though - when we were raising our children, we often came from various Sunday School rooms to the main sanctuary for the Morning Worship service. The kids never had to wonder where we were sitting. They knew, and sometimes got there before we did.
DeleteLove you
ReplyDeleteBack atcha.
DeleteYup, I shake things up with our seating chart and we try to make it into all four quadrants of the sanctuary over the course of a year. It actually does lend a different perspective because your seatmates are not always the same. Look at it as helping others stretch their personal envelopes a little bit when you are having to stretch a whole bunch!
ReplyDeleteLove this!
DeleteThe people who sit in our area have formed a relationship over the years - it's kinda like an informal small group. :) When someone new sits there, I welcome them and sit beside them. :D I heard the most horrible thing from a visitor once. He asked if he was in my seat, and I told him he could sit where ever he liked. He said that last Sunday someone asked them to move. I was APPALLED! And apologized profusely. :( I pray that never happens to you, Jan. I have a feeling it would crush you.
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DeleteIt wouldn't crush me--but I'd leave the seat and head right out the door, shaking the dirt off my feet in the doorway.
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