Month: February 2012

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Church #6, Solid Rock Church

Date: 2/19/12

Church: Solid Rock Church

Pastor: Pastor Justin Metcalf

Time Spent: 10:30am – 12:15pm

Overall Impression: Mixed

Type: As I am finding is common, no denomination was claimed. The Pastor made mention to me of a Pentecostal tradition and their website specifies that they are a group that came from an overcrowded Pentecostal church in Rensselaer.
9/23/13 Update: I checked further into this denomination and it is part of UPCI- United Pentecostal Church International.

Format: I was distracted from the format by my other observations and didn’t write it down. From memory it went: Music, prayer, sermon, communion, closing

Thoughts: Wow, this church is going to be hard to describe. I was surprised so many times by things good and bad. Very first impression -no bulletin. Then three or four people saw that I was new and greeted me warmly but briefly enough so as not to be overwhelming. I was also offered a copy of the new testament and a visitor form. I used the new testament copy as service went, but gave it back afterwards as I already have several at home. The music was going and I was thinking about my project and what kind of people attended this church and how much they really believed what was being said; the kind of things I sometimes think about during these Sunday services. One of the greeters came up to me to take away the visitor form. Well I hadn’t filled it in yet. But he was very insistent. I thought “Maybe he wants that little clipboard it’s on?” so I gave it back. He took it, noticed I hadn’t written on it and said, “You didn’t fill it out.” Then followed an exchange in which he tried to convince me to finish writing on it, came back three minutes later to take it, looked at it again and realized I hadn’t included contact info, and tried to get that from me. I said, “I’m not comfortable giving that out.” He said, “We wouldn’t share it with anyone.” All this going on while the band and church is still singing praise music. Finally he took the paper as it was and went away. I wish I’d said something afterwards to the guy or the pastor. I got the vibe that he really didn’t have ANY idea how uncomfortable he was making me.

There were a lot of other bits that were noticeable which I will outline briefly.

1) The music sounded good. Combo was: guitar, bass, drum set, keyboard. The musicians all seemed talented and I like the blend of the four instruments.

2) Lots of Christianese. Maybe at some point in the future I will give Christianese a whole post to itself. Christianese is made up of words or phrases that sound normal, but mean something extra in the context of Christianity. Most used phrase today was “God will physically touch us”. That’s weirds right? It almost makes God sound dirty. Or is he a regular person that who could put his hand on our shoulder? In fact I’m pretty sure this one just means the opposite of what it says. God is not really a physical being, so we must be ‘touched’ by Him in some way emotionally or mentally.

3) This church does a charitable project new each month. This month was a Habitat for Humanity build. Next month is probably going to be a food pantry project.

4) Prayer time was not open to congregation requests, but it did require us to hold hands and it was very noisy. Lot’s of people exclaiming ‘yes Lord’ or ‘Amen’.

5) The sermon message was a bit simplistic. A lot of it was just use of single words or phrases. It went something like… “God is not ‘no’. God is ‘yes’. Say ‘yes and amen'” Then everyone said -yes and amen. Lots of repeating phrases after the pastor. I was almost reminded of Sunday #3. But there was a couple little gems there too. Pastor said that it is easy for us to go to a doctor who we hardly know and have faith he will make us well. Why is it harder to have faith in God who we do know? And he mentioned rhema and logos. Which I had to look up. Both are translated as ‘word’, but they have a slight difference in use. Rhema means ‘spoken word’. Logos has something of a broader definition. Sometimes it can mean ‘written word’. It is also used to mean language or even discourse. That makes logos feel like it represents not the actual sounds of a word, but the thought going on behind the word. And logos can mean specifically ‘word of God’.

6) Communion! I haven’t actually shared a communion since my project began. Not all churches do it, not all do it every Sunday, and not all allow casual visitors to partake. The pastor mentioned that any can come have communion, so this church is open to anyone having it. It was grape juice and cracker style. (I think the cracker was actually matzoh!) Everyone filed up front, took some and wandered back to their seat. Then we all ate and drank at the same time.

After service was done I waited around for the pastor to say hello. I introduced myself and my project. He gave me props for my courage (he didn’t say props) and asked if there was anything he could do for me. I was surprised because usually pastors either say “cool!” or offer things which they have thought of that might help. Being asked what I actually wanted made me feel like he didn’t just see me as some lost sheep that needed directing, but possibly a smart individual who is capable of finding stuff out herself. Since I assumed he’d be open to it, I asked for prayer. I got some prayer. I also got a book called (don’t laugh) Christianese. It was a gift. I’m going to have to read it for my next Sunday off.

Overall Feelings: Still mixed. They seem nice, enthusiastic, and oblivious to the couple of weird things that are gonna turn people off.

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Church #5 Bethlehem Community

Date: 2/12/12

Church: Bethlehem Community Church

Pastor: This Sunday it was Pastor David Eames.

Time Spent: 10:00 – 11:30am with a little extra thrown in talking to some friends

Overall Impression: Good, but bigger than I’m used to

Type: According to the website, this church began as, and I suspect still considers itself, an interdenominational church. I’m not sure what denominations it is between. It has an evangelical feel to it. I’m not entirely sure how pastors are selected, hired, called or whatever. All of the pastors listed on the website are male and several of them have degrees in theology from seminary colleges. There was also a section describing leaders which made a distinction between elders (male) and deaconesses (female). I couldn’t make out if one is meant to ‘outrank’ the other or what. I’m sure there is a set of rules and regulations for all this stuff that isn’t going to be available to the casual web surfer.

Format: Music, announcements, more music, appeal for money for charity type project, sermon, music

Thoughts: So I gotta be honest, there were a lot of things working against my liking this one. It was a particularly down Sunday for me from the get-go. For some reason (or several) I was just bummed out when I got up that morning. That might be the reason the music wasn’t really doing much for me. I also suspect the gymnasium which doubled as the worship space might have had some poor acoustics going on. I wasn’t greeted at all this time, except in a cursory way by the woman handing out bulletins. This I think I can safely say was due to the enormous number of people in attendance; too many to recognize a new visitor. And to be fair, the woman who sat next to me struck up a short conversation with me after the service in which she found out I was new and invited me back.

I can’t say the sermon interested me much. It was pretty short owing to the choir and the charity appeal taking time away. A couple of friends of mine who I met afterwards said that it was unusual in its brevity. I did get a few little nuggets of awesome from it though. He said that “every church has problems because every church has people”. This is a wonderful idea to hear from a pastor. Many churches fail to recognize that they might have issues going on that could be improved upon. Just recognizing the need to consider problems is a great thing. I wish more churches would acknowledge this idea. I also noticed Pastor Eames can get kinda shouty. A few people responded with ‘amen’ or ‘yes’, but not in a widespread way. And he’s funny. He told an amusing joke about a painter which I will retell later on.

After the service I got some extra info on the church from my two friends who attend there. We had a bit of good talk before I went on home. I’m not really sure if I would have stayed long if they hadn’t been around. The pastor kinda disappeared afterwards- I think there was a meeting he had to go lead? And it was a whole huge mess of people, which can sometimes make me nervous. I don’t love big crowds.

Overall Feelings: Eh, s’okay I guess. The size thing might be a detriment to my returning. As I said I’m not in love with big crowds. Other than that it wasn’t really problematic.

Oh yeah, that joke:

So a house painter is looking for work. He gets connected with a church that is in some serious need of paint. He strikes a particularly good bargain which will compensate him well and make the church happy too. He gets his supplies ready and shows up to start the job. Once he gets out of his vehicle he realizes the church is much bigger than he originally thought. It has a whole extra wing- he isn’t going to have enough paint! What can he do? He decides it won’t hurt anyone if he just adds some water to the paint to stretch it. As he starts working, the beautiful sunny day begins to cloud over and become threatening. Dark clouds fill the sky and thunder and lighting rumble and crash. He knows he’s in trouble with the man upstairs, so he gets down on his knees and prays, “God what should I do?” God’s voice comes down from heaven, “REPAINT! AND THIN NO MORE!”

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Vaguely religious #1

As part of my project I would like to fill in the weeks I don’t visit a church by doing something else at least vaguely religious. This time I watched the movie Dogma. I know it’s probably thought of as mostly a stupid comedy, but I actually watched it for the religious storyline. And that’s what I’ll talk about. If you haven’t seen it, get with the times! I mean, just teasing. Spoilers ahead.

The story goes as follows:

Two disfavored angels try to take advantage of a forgiveness policy of a particular church and regain entry to heaven. All that’s required is to pass under the arch of this church to gain indulgence (equivalent to forgiveness within the movie context). The problem is that God kicked the angels out. If they get forgiveness without his ok, it makes God fallible and nullifies all existence. So several entities are dispatched to stop this from happening. They include an apostle, an angel, a muse, and a distant relative of Jesus Christ. God is quiet during all this, leading to speculation that he’s on earth somewhere posing as a human (he enjoys skeeball) and hasn’t heard what is going on.

The movie has quite a few things I like. Very early in the movie we see a Catholic cardinal unveiling the new symbol for Catholicism- the buddy Christ. It replaces the bleeding Christ on the cross which is just too depressing. That seems right on the money to me. My church growing up always had an abstract statue crucifix. I was surprised by the realistic crucifix at some of my friends’ churches. Of course “buddy Christ” is a little silly. But the whole blood and gore thing should go right out the window as far as I’m concerned.

Then there’s the- Jesus had siblings issue. Some theology teaches that the Virgin Mary must be a virgin forever. Besides seeming unrealistic, this is contested in the bible itself which talks of Jesus’ brothers. Some translators insist this is a loose term that means his cousins, but I don’t buy that. They all had like a zillion kids back in the day. She was married. She had more kids.

The characters I could go on and on about. I’ll try to be brief with those I felt were the most interesting. First there’s Bethany. She is approached by an angel to go after the wayward angels and stop them. She has no idea why she is chosen and feels disconnected from her faith, wondering if it is really what she believes anymore. There are numerous little conversations with those she meets about faith. Because of this Bethany is made the most human and realistic character in this comedy. Especially striking is the scene in which she is told of her relation to Jesus Christ. She reacts badly, running blindly until she finally crashes in a river (baptism allusion anyone?) and tries to face what she’s been told. Throughout, she has to take steps that she is unsure of, with only faith to assure her that she will succeed. Yet she finally does achieve her purpose, at the cost of her life (Jesus parallel) which God then restores to her. (nice!)

Now I understand that the only real reason Jay and Silent Bob were in this picture is because the Kevin Smith fans expected it. But at the same time they make interesting characters. They are foretold to Bethany as “prophets” with whom she should journey, but they don’t seem aware of it themselves. I like the idea of God being able to use people for his works even if they don’t know about it. It’s also clearly a bit of spiritual revelation to them to be involved in something so massively mysterious. As a stand alone movie, ignoring whatever other movies they were characters in later (which I haven’t seen), I would guess the experience changed who they were as people.

Loki and Bartleby are the two disfavored angels. They fell out of favor after the killing of the firstborn in Egypt and have been living in the midwest ever since. They are both very jaded and unhappy, always wishing they could get back to their former glory. The special church indulgence thing seems like just what they needed. Now, as a side note, it seems like the indulgence being equal to forgiveness is a misinterpretation. It’s really meant to be a lessening of the actual punishment a soul goes through on the way to heaven. The punishment part is called purgatory and souls sometimes have to undergo this punishment before entering heaven. And all of that is based on seldom used (but still on the books) Catholic teachings. But in the movie it means forgiveness, which is what the angels want. Halfway through the movie, one of them accidentally learns that what they are trying to do will obliterate reality and that there are several individuals out to stop him. He seems not to understand this fully or maybe he just ignores it. My view is that he actually understands well that this will happen and wants his own existence terminated. It is clearly torturing him to remain on earth out of God’s presence. We see at the end of the movie God finally reappears, thanks in part to Bethany, to do just that. God allows him to become nullified and ends his misery as he mouths words ‘thank you’. To me this is the best and most moving part of the story. God is merciful, not wrathful. This is how I see God. This is the God I love, and as weird as it might be to have a moving spiritual connection with a comedy, I did. And I think the movie is just great for that ending alone.