Skip to main content

Yes, this is a real thing. Shaking my head.



We took a week off from our search because we had a visiting granddaughter. Visiting unknown churches is awkward enough without the added awkwardness of a child who may or may not find enough in the service to keep her interested--or at least still. And what if the unknown pastor should say something heretical, or just plain wrong? I don't want to have to explain to her that no, Jesus never rode dinosaurs.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stuff that doesn't go anywhere else, and some hyperbole.

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

Baptist Roots (but not deep ones)

Little Baptist me Ben and I married in 1975, when he was 23 and I was just a few days past my 20 th birthday. We’d both been raised Baptist—not the super-conservative independent Baptists, nor even the very conservative Southern Baptists, but American Baptist, the most mainline protestant Baptist (but still pretty conservative, for all that). Only two generations before us, Baptists weren’t allowed to play with cards or dice, to go to movies, to dance, to drink alcohol. That was gradually loosening up by the time we married, but both of us would still have considered ourselves conservative, evangelical Christians at that time.             I’ll say right off, though, that even as a very young woman, I had a bit of a rebellious streak, and I wasn’t as Baptist as my upbringing. In college, I became involved with a church that was part of the hippie-ish charismatic movement that was blooming in the 70s. The church was different and exciting, but there were definite cult-like aspec

Two absolutely serious lists, and a silly one. Actually, all three are serious.

So now here we are, looking for a new church home for the first time in four decades. Ben and I each have lists of what we’re looking for; our lists aren’t anywhere close to the same. This is my list: ·         Neither tiny nor ‘mega’ in attendance. 100 – 200 people seems ideal ·         A quiet, contemplative worship service ·         No “performances” on stage, either by singers or speakers who call attention to themselves. I don’t mind contemporary music (I prefer a blend of old and new), but I do mind showiness. The people on stage are not there to be the center of attention, and I don’t go to church to be entertained. If all the song leader does is establish pitch and help the congregation know when to come in, that’s dandy. As a musical person, I also really like to have notes to look at.  ·         A good mix of ages and generations, races and nationalities, genders, educational and economic levels, able-bodied and disabled folk. In short— everyone should be welcomed a