But why is the clipart pastor preaching from the yellow pages?

Of the liberal-leaning churches on my list, almost all have women pastors. I’m delighted to see women in church leadership, and not surprised that they aren’t often seen in more conservative denominations. I’m just sorry that there’s not a more even distribution of male and female leadership across all denominations.

Another observation--of the churches we’ve visited so far, there's a correlation: the older the church building, the grayer the hair of the congregation. Someone should do a study on that.

Here's a tongue-in-cheek link from the satire site The Babylon Bee. It's fun, and not too far from the truth--but I think introversion is largely misunderstood, and also perhaps the reason that Ben and I are having such difficulty finding a place that works for both of us. The two churches that he's liked most were the most extroverted. And it's not really about hugging, or "passing the peace," or even talking to people. I don't mind any of those things, in the right context. It's the too-frenetic energy pulsing in the air, the pressure to be sunny, the anxiety about saying or doing the wrong thing when there's a firmly established culture there with a veritable scroll of unwritten rules and expectations. It's like being forced to take a high-stakes test that I didn't study for, and extroverted people will never understand, because either they can intuit the rules, or they just don't care if they flub.