The photo with this post (me in yellow) is a fun action shot from the summer of 1984.
In other news...
Someone was questioning my use of the word "Shalom." It's a great word that means "peace" but is also used as a greeting or farewell. And...its use is not limited to practitioners of a specific religion. (Yes...Munkee Girl I know you know all this.)
As for conversion...not at this point. While I've met the rabbi and find her to be a wonderful person, if I was to pursue Judiasm, I would first talk to my Godmother.
Since I'm talking about religion, I went to church on Saturday night. It was a short, odd service that made me not want to go again. Jess was playing bells in the bell choir (and no, not the reason I don't want to go back). It was a casual, Saturday night service at a local Methodist church. Now, I was brought up within the Methodist faith (with a brief stint at a private Lutheran school). I was struck with how evangelical this pastor was. It put me off a bit. I'm not used to Methodist ministers asking for "Amens!" and "Praise the Lords!" from the congeregation (though to be fair the call and response has a rich religious tradition). I also found out that the minister is newer and actually runs the "contemporary" service so that explained a lot. No, what bothered me was the simple fact that his sermon was a sham. It was a 15-minute advertisement for some new movie called "Amazing Grace." Sure, it sounds like a fine subject for a movie (abolition of slavery in England) and there's a religious connection with the author of the song "Amazing Grace," but I don't go to church for movie reviews or commercialism. I was not pleased.
That said, I'll give their more traditional service a shot.
4 comments:
I concur re: the traditional vs. contemporary service. I've been to both at SJ, albeit several years ago, and much prefer the former. The music's better, too.
I hardly ever go to church at all any more (for more spiritual reasons), but if I did, I'd be in the formal service camp. Maybe I'm an old fogie at 33, but I don't like praise bands and hand clapping and PowerPoint presentations and movie clips in my worship service. It all feels commercialized and packaged like they're marketing and branding God. Maybe good strategy for getting people in the pews and money in the coffers, but it stinks. There's a beauty in ceremony and ritual and quietness; we've just become to busy and loud and bored to appreciate it.
There's a definite place for contemporary services, but I don't want them replacing mine. Even though, hypocrite that I am, I don't actually go.
That's my mini-rant. Thanks for listening.
Excellent...finally the throw-down I've been waiting for. I loves me some Rockin' Jesus Hour, but you know that. As someone wittier than I put it, why should Christians have to walk around acting like they've been sucking on lemons for a week? Aren't we supposed to have fun? And, if more rock-like songs get younger people into church, I'm all for it. (Plus, our 13 month old goes nuts for the clapping--she's having a rockin' good Jesus time.) As I argue with certain Evangelicals of a particular age constantly, at some point, Rock of Ages and Amazing Grace were uppity new hymns being pushed by whipper snappers, too. Otherwise, we'd all be singing in Latin. (Some of us still are, but that's another story.)
I don't know where Jennifer is coming from, but I've had the same conversation with Ken and Wes, so I'm going to take a stab at the tithing thing. I only hear that the point of church is to get people to turn over their money from people who don't go to a church on a regular basis. We go to two churches, Catholic and Baptist. The collection plate is passed, and you either put something in it or don't, and no one stares at you either way. In fact, since I'm lazy and only want to write one check a month, I'm only putting something in it one out of four weekends--no one has ever said anything to us about it. Mostly, tithing or contributing at all is a personal thing. We just feel like everything we have is a gift from God, and we're called to give some of it back to help God's work on earth. If anyone is going to a church that emphasizes a certain tithing level and checks up on it (I've heard of some megachurches demanding to see W-2's), then I'd say time to find another church. I don't recall Jesus asking to see Peter's paystub. ("WHAT! Only 200 fish caught this week!?")
Now, how do y'all old school peeps feel about the King James Version of the Bible? Cause I've got a whole lotta rantin' I can do on that. ;)
Oh yeah, and sorry about your gimpiness, Ken. Look out--you're almost as old as we are! And, my response to the sermon would have been the same--you'll remember we switched to another church after one too many sermons that started with, "So I was watching Sports Night last night..." and never came back around to the readings. That's the beauty of the whole free will thing.
Whoa. First, since Munkee Girl referenced me in the comment about not going to church being due to my believing that the only point of church is to turn over money, and that that is my objection I'm going to have to respond a bit.
One of my core problem with attending church is that the focus of churches today seems to not be about worship or theology, but about the churches themselves. It does relate to money in the sense that I see many churches spend a lot of money on themselves. (A generalization, but one that I think is mostly true.) This could be in the form of having outlandish structures, or daycare centers, etc. A donation to a church that then turns the money around so that I can place my kid in a day care center that I benefit from doesn't really seem like I'm giving the money away to a worthy cause, but more like I'm spending the money on myself. I know that not all of the money goes to such matters, and that a bit (depending on the church) goes to actual charity, missionary work, etc. From what I've heard each of the three crosses that the Church at Pinnacle Hills cost over a million dollars each. The Pope's hat could probably fetch a million easily on eBay. With that kind of money a lot of bona fide good works could be accomplished.
The Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville has a pretty sweet looking daycare center/playground. This is a church that looks to have a lot of middle-class and upper middle-class members. How charitable was it for the members to spend the money on their own kids when compared to what that money could have done for helping children suffering from abuse? There's nothing wrong with spending money on your own kids, but to make a charitable donation to a church to just have it spent on yourself doesn't seem to be charity me.
People that know me, know I'm not bleeding heart liberal, and that I take pride in being known as a "not nice" person in general, but if money is going to be spent via the church there's a lot of spending I can't make sense of. It's not the amount, but what it's being spent on. Having said all of the above, I do realize that I have failed to find adequate, alternate outlets to either donate money or time for charitable purposes. I'm going to have to work on that.
Then there's the issue of the socializing within the church. One of the things that led me to stop attending was when my church formed a youth group so that we all could hang out together even more. (A side effect being that we'd spend more of the church money on ourselves.) I didn't mind hanging with the other people from church at church, but it was starting to look like the church experience was going to become very insular. I suppose this is more of a personal thing, some folks dig insularity. I however, had to let my fellows know that while I liked being with them, I didn't like being with them THAT much. My not liking people all that much in general, I will admist is a failing. I feel that I'm polite, and I don't wish them harm generally, but I'm not a people person. Only so much I can handle.
I also have a lot of plain old theological disagreements with most churches these days. I suppose that there could be one out there that would be a good fit, but I've not found a Calvinist church yet that also bases their musical selection on Johnny Cash (not that Cash was a Calvinist of any sort to my knowledge). I'm afraid the Presbyterian Church left me long ago with its promotion of the "Voice of Sophia" (what is one more than a trinity, a quadrinity?), praise for Hezbollah (it has it's own wiki), and its divestment campaign for Israel. (Why not Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, or probably 50 other countries that have problems. No, let's pick on the one Jewish country.)
In regards to the "Rockin' Jesus Hour" music, to me it's like putting chocolate syrup on fried catfish. I've tried it. (It was a college cafeteria dare.) I didn't like it. But there's nothing inherently wrong with having different tastes in music. And it is cute to see Sophia go clap happy when she hears that music.
Apologies for making the comments so long. Please return to Ken's regularly scheduled blog of goodness.
Post a Comment