Rex and I go to an amazing church in Lansing. We LOVE it, and we can't wait to go back in the fall. Neither of us were particularly happy with the churches our parents attended, though, so we decided getting married was a great excuse to find a new one to attend this summer in Kalamazoo. We have visited a few different ones, and they seem to be getting successively weirder. I decided I should document the churches we have attended this summer...and lest you think a blog post about churches will be boring - give me a chance. Just keep reading. You're not even going to believe a couple of these.
1. Rex's old church - This church is a small church, which we like. The problem is that the pastor's messages are, well, sub par. He went through an entire sermon without quoting the Bible once, but rather talked about why prejudice is bad. Not one verse! In a church! Also, I would venture to guess that the median age of the people who attend that church is about...65. When Rex and I were in high school, I went to youth group with him there once. The middle school, high school, and college group COMBINED had seven people. It isn't exactly a church geared to a young population.
2. My old church - At the time that I left, the pastor had spent the past five months on Titus 2. I am not joking. Every week for five months with no end in sight. I think I have the whole chapter memorized. He would preach an entire sermon on one word of the chapter! I figured we had been in that chapter too long, and there is a lot more to the Bible than Titus 2. I wanted to learn a little bit more and from somewhere different!
3. Church #1 - Church #1 that we visited is BY FAR the most normal one. We showed up to church on Sunday morning to find the door by the parking lot was locked. Thinking that was weird, we went around to try another door. That one was locked too. We saw lots of cars in the parking lot, so we figured some door HAD to be open. We tried another door...and another one...and FINALLY found the open door that we were supposed to be using all along. By that time we were late, and we walked in embarrassedly and sat in the back. Apparently we picked a bad seat, because light from the sunroof was shining DIRECTLY in my eyes. I tried to move to the right or left, but to no avail. We were already late, so we obviously couldn't move. I pulled my sunglasses out of my purse and put them on, feeling like an idiot. It worked, though! After the service, they had punch and cookies for everyone. Yay! Score one for that church.
4. Church #2 - This is where things started to get weird. Rex and I went to go visit this church, and when the service started we felt like we had walked into a concert. The singers were belting at the top of their lungs and dancing. There was a light show and fog spilling off the stage. A giant jumbotron-esque screen put up pictures of the singers with their names (presumably for any agents sitting in the congregation who might "discover" them). It seemed that there was a lot of focus on the show and not really a "worship" atmosphere. THEN (this is my favorite part), the worship leader said "Okay guys. Just lift your hands to the air and give God all of your troubles. Come on, everyone - lift up your hands!" Everyone did it. Rex and I looked at each other awkwardly and acquiesced. I have no problem with people who want to lift their hands in praise, but to make EVERYONE do it is kind of weird. Well, it got weirder. After we all had our hands raised, we had to sing this really creepy chant. Ask me to sing it for you sometime, because I remember it. It was that creepy. I actually turned to Rex at one point and said, "I am a little frightened right now..." lol. So we chanted this "We are coming into your throne room" chant about ten or fifteen times, and then we were allowed to put our hands down. Um, okay. Highly creepy. Have you ever seen the movie "Saved"? It was the church from that movie, I swear. I really, really expected the pastor to back flip onto the stage. I was disappointed when he didn't. The sermon was awesome, but it was tough to bounce back from the traumatic worship time.
5. Church #3 - Okay, brace yourself for this one. Are you ready? Because Rex and I weren't. We walked into the church, and everyone was sitting on the floor. Yep. So I tried to daintily sit on the floor in my church clothes. I believe I was largely unsuccessful. When the first person came up to begin the service, she was wearing a T-shirt, capris, and no shoes. I looked around, and a number of other people were also barefoot. A man got up with the woman, and for our worship time we stood up and sang the "Boom Chicka Boom" song from old camp times: "I said a BOOM chicka boom! I said a BOOM chicka Boom! I said I boom chicka rocka chicka rocka chicka boom!!!" After repeating that about five or ten times in various "versions" (valley girl, Elivs, etc.), we were allowed to sit back on the floor again. Then a Ugandan man got up and gave a speech about God's design for the world which was actually a pretty good message. After the message, though, Boom Chicka Boom man got up and said, "Okay, everyone! Time for crafts!" Yes - craft time at church. I am not joking. So Rex and I had to make a puzzle piece that described our family. We made a pretty awesome one depicting us and our rats, I must admit. When we finished, we asked if there was anything else we should stay for but we were told that as soon as we were done with our craft we could leave. So we turned in our puzzle piece and high tailed it out of there. I must admit, though, watching old people in the congregation doing crafts was pretty funny. Imagine if your church did that!
So anyway, Rex gets to pick the church next week. I can only imagine where we are going to end up.
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