The Church Chronicles. Part, the Second.

photo courtesy of here. not actually a picture of the place i am talking about...

So, there I was. Well, if you don't know why I was there, read the post before the last one. If you don't know where I was, the answer was...another anonymous church. I don't want to be traced. They advertised a "Single Adults Ministry" that met on Thursday nights. It sounded interesting, so I decided to check it out. Let's start by saying that this church was out in the middle of East Bumblyberg, by which I mean the sticks, the boonies, the middle of the proverbial Nowhere. It took a solid half hour of driving from my house to make it out there, not a point in its favor. But once I saw the place, I understood why. They needed the room. A sprawling sea of asphalt surrounded a building as large as...time out for a second. I have no spatial reasoning skills. I could not even slightly guess at the actual square footage of this thing. And, in metaphorical terms, I tend to exaggerate (It was as large as four football fields, end to end!). I cannot give you a comparable estimate. Suffice it to say, it was a very, very, very large church. That large church you have in your mind now? No, bigger.

So, I pulled into the enormous parking lot, and drove a good 40 seconds before I was on the side of the church where all the other cars were parked, which I presumed to be the entrance. I saw a number of older adult women as I pulled through the lot, maybe 40 or 50, heading for the church, giving me funny looks. I assumed they had an aversion to Patsy Cline, who was crooning through my speakers at the time, and decided not to hold it against them and move on. I parked, walked in, successfully maneuvered away from the welcome table, made my way through the inevitable in-church Starbucks doppelganger, and walked into the doors of the worship space.

Right off the bat, MORE ROUND TABLES! Okay, timeout again for a second here. I realize that you want to be hip, emergent, and "build community." But I am a first time guest, I am your Holy Grail, your Golden Haired Woman, your Maltese Falcon. I am who you're trying to build community with. And let me tell you, I am deeply turned off by round tables. This is a CHURCH! I want to sit in a ROW, a PEW, or some other in-straight-lines configuration that doesn't launch me into the most uncomfortable part of the experience (making-eye-contact-and-small-talk) right off the bat. PLEASE!

Ahem. Moving on. I walk in the door and there is the inevitable Hillsong worship, projected on the inevitable dizzying powerpoint projecter, with the inevitable gotee-ed pastor and...What image does "single adults ministry" of a large, suburban church conjure up for you? Go ahead. Ponder a moment. Let me tell you what struck mine eye as soon as I walked through the door. ALL OLD PEOPLE! Like, there was one person in the entire room that was under the age of 40, and he was running the sound board. This was just so far from my wildest imaginings of what I would face. This was the whole point of me moving away from my much enjoyed Lutheran church. Have we already talked about how I have nothing against old people, I just have a surfeit of them in my life at the moment and no new friends my own age! And then, to come to the "Single Adults Ministry" and find that, you know, I don't feel I was misled. These were probably single adults. I just couldn't believe that, in the whole group, which I spent time surveying from the back of the room, I couldn't find a single other person in their 20s. Am I the only 20 something in Buffalo, for crying out loud!!!!

And, then I left. Yes, that's right, did not stay for the rest of the worship time, did not stay for the message, just turned around, visited the ladies room as a diversion, and then left through a different set of doors than the ones I came in (there were many). It was, to be sure, a great defeat. Although, I have said consolingly to myself, I don't know that I could have ever seriously considered a church with such a large parking lot. I have currently retired to lick my wounds for a while and look for new leads on young churches. A couple are forthcoming. We'll see what happens next in The Church Chronicles!!! (Bum bum baaaaaaah!! Echoey voice, animated graphic of two giant stone doors slamming shut, with THE CHURCH CHRONICLES engraved on the outside. This is my tv show. Didn't you know that?)

Until next time,
S.

Something's brewing

I have been restless lately. Not lately as in this afternoon, but lately as in, well, at least a week or so. But it's strong. Suddenly I have this overwhelming desire to change everything. To move out of this house. To move out of this city. To move to a different city, or maybe to the country. To live in a cabin in the woods, away from everyone. To live in an urban commune with everything held in common. To get a dog. To get a new wardrobe. To get new friends. To get a new job. Not just a new client, but a completely new line of work. To change the season. To get a kiddie pool for the backyard. To play in the sprinkler. To go on a long, long drive, and not look back.

I feel like I used to know where my life was heading, what I wanted to be when I grew up. Now I feel like I'm just getting jobs because they sound like fun to me, but I don't really have any idea where this is all heading. Maybe that is the thing. I feel like in all this muddled desire for change, there is something that really does need to happen or to change, or something is about to happen, maybe without me doing anything. But I could not, for the life of me, say which of these things it is.

This is how it went down.

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

I decided recently that I need more friends. Now, maybe this sounds like some latent desire that everyone probably has or is at least open to, but for me this represents a significant sea change. After graduating from college, I had a lot of friends that dispersed, and of course I missed them, but for the most part, I was content because it took so much time staying in touch with everyone through phone calls, facebook, cards, and e-mails, that my schedule felt full. But then, I was living in Houston and making no friends there and it hit me, one night, that you can have friends that you love all over the globe, but if you have no one to go see a movie with, it's no good.

Flash forward to Buffalo, where friends abound! to the point that I am again not in the market, and am, in fact, making friends against my will. But, for the most part, these are tango friends, work friends, theatre friends, or coffee date friends. They are glorious, remarkable human beings, and I feel delighted to have the opportunity to get to know them, but. They are all older than me, and busy with careers and weddings and familys and not the kind of folks you can call up out of the blue on a Saturday night. Combine that with the fact that some of my own friends, my bedrock buds, the people that I would call up on a Saturday night and drink with and dance with and most certainly take to the movies, are moving away from Buffalo. It's surprising what even a small reduction does to your sense of community. You go from feeling established with an embarrassment of riches to feeling shaky, unstable, and wondering.

The thing that one finds in post-college life, or at least that I've found, is that you don't just stumble upon interesting, intelligent, engaging people under every rock. There used to be so many of them! Where did they go!?! Rather than spend thousands of dollars on a grad school education that I don't really want, I've decided to turn to another social hub: churches. Yes, I go to a Lutheran church, which I am actually quite fond of, but there are no, and I mean NO young people there. There are probably less than 10 people who regularly attend church and are under the age of 35. So, I'm...gulp...church shopping. I hate it, but what's a girl to do? All of a sudden I have a very different set of criteria for what I am looking for in a church, and it's a short list, sadly enough. I think it's worth it to make a switch. I think it is.

I started a couple weeks ago by investigating a church which...shall remain nameless. Suffice it to say, it's the urban outreach of a very large, suburban church, held in what looks like the shell of an old, unhip church that probably ran out of money and went under a while ago. I walked in on Sunday morning and was stopped just inside the door by someone asking me, "Are you new?" I admitted, with hesitation, that I was, and was taken over to the new people table, where I was informed that, "if I filled out a visitor's card, I would get to take home my choice of book and a prize." Feeling like I was playing a carnival game instead of attending church, I reluctantly put down my contact information and was given the choice of blah blah blah, by Max Lucado, something or other Every Man's Battle, blah Book Cover Showing Woman With Arms Flung Wide in Field. Realizing that I cared very little about my choice, I just grabbed a book and my charming little giftbag and moved on.

I was ushered to a seat at one of the church's many round, cafeteria style tables, where people were sitting in groups. At my table was an older couple, an older woman holding somebody else's baby, and a woman who looked like she was in her mid-thirties, alone. I had missed what was probably the bulk of the worship and we seemed to be in the midst of announcements? The pastor told us, "We know that God doesn't sleep, but, if he did, what would be the last thing he thinks about before going to be? Also, when he wakes up, although we know from the Scripture that he doesn't wake up because he doesn't sleep, but if he did, what would be the first thing he would think about when he woke up? Discuss it right now, at your tables." What followed was a very awkward 40 seconds where we looked around at each other nervously until the pastor interrupted and said, "Now what were your answers, shout them out," which was responded to with cries of "Love," "Us," and "Salvation."

"Those are all good answers," the pastor said. He went on, but I drifted away, lost in trying to figure out what was going on (was this the sermon? why was the worship band just standing around and waiting?) The next group activity we were asked to do was for us all to share a "win" from the week, some thing that we had done that was uniquely great because we were Christian. "I got a hug from a woman because I tied her shoe for her when her hands were full," said the woman with the borrowed baby. We talked about this and about the school that she worked at and how many days left till summer break for another thirty seconds till the pastor interrupted again. Then we were all supposed to pray together, outloud, at our tables. I felt uncomfortable.

After that, they played what must have been the final song in their worship set. It was something someone at the church had written, I think, I had never heard it before. It made full use of the stage full of electric guitars and drums. The stage itself looked like what would be the set if they turned Les Mis into a rock opera. There were two makeshift altars on either side of the church, festooned with candles. One said "Love" and the other said "Home," both in old, rusty letters. The powerpoint slide backgrounds were animated. I had a hard time focusing.

After the song, we all settled in for the sermon. It was purportedly about singleness, but instead the majority of the time was spent talking about how to date God's way. Not too much physical contact right up front. Don't start talking about "the m word" (marriage) too soon. Guard your heart. Etc. When the sermon was over and we said the final prayer, I slipped out the back.

The upside? There were tons of young people.

Is this what it's come to? That in order to go to a church with other twenty-somethings they have to be, candle-lighting, incense smoking, song-writing, take-communion-anytime-you-feel-led, emergent flaky people? That is a soap box I could speak from for days, but I won't. Suffice it to say, I don't know that I would go back there. It felt so uncomfortable on so many different levels. I...feel defeated. But! I can't give up after just one church! So, stay tuned for the ongoing adventures of...The Church Chronicles!

(yeesh. wish me luck.)
S.

Catching Up is Hard to Do...

OMG. Okay, I'm all about the blogging without obligation thing, to a certain point, but I don't think that point extends to over a month of non-posting. Does it help if I say I've been busy? May was mostly devoted to a benefit I helped plan ("The Art of Womanhood" to benefit The Priscilla Project, a really wonderful charity that helps pregnant refugee women) and then after that, a really big tango weekend towards the end of the month. The weekend included, in addition to the usual milongas and workshops, a performance that was at the theatre that I work at, so I was doubly involved in that, and ended up helping out with the show in a very hands on way. As in, climbing up and down into the sound booth (which is, in fact, just on scaffolding up behind the seats, so when I say climb, I really do mean climb) and running the follow-spot, which clanged down into a lower setting in its stand during the show, making a big noise and scaring the crap out of me. That was an epic evening to be sure. And then, gone for two weeks in Houston for the high-school graduation of the little sis, and you heard me right, that was two weeks, two full weeks of absence and a very, very busy time that was as well.

And now back in Buffalo, trying to catch up on...everything. Work, life, friends, cleaning, the whole nine yards. No rest for the weary. So, for the past month, I guess that has meant that my poor little blog has been left in the dust. But, never fear, intrepid readers. I hope to post sufficiently in the next few months, despite the incredible obstacles standing in my path. But I am planning some interesting stuff. Now that the guitar challenge is officially over (with mixed results) I am planning to do the same thing with a 30 day writing challenge, and the blog should hopefully reap some of the fruits of that labor. There is also a little side project I am working on this summer which could yield some very interesting posts indeed...

But, holy cow! It's basically summer! It's all happening so quickly! But this is so completely my favorite time in Buffalo (except for maybe spring or fall) and I am so glad it has arrived. I have been pulling out all my cute summer clothes, buying a pitcher for the gallons of iced tea I hope to have always on hand, planning strawberry shortcakes aplenty, eyeing the backyard for the next phase of renovation, enjoying my first street fair of the year and generally feeling awhirl with the change of seasons. I have a feeling it's going to be really, really good. Hang in there, my faithful intrepids. There's good stuff to come.