Month: September 2013

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Church #42, Mother Theresa’s

Date: 9/22/13

Church name/type: Mother Theresa’s Catholic Community, Roman Catholic mission community and halfway house

Pastor: Father Peter Young

Style of worship: A short Catholic mass with very few formalities

Overall Impression: This is a great place

Thoughts:
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this place. Being unable to find a website I had no idea which group was in the building. I was surprised to discover that it was another Catholic mass I was attending. Catholic formulas are fairly unmistakeable so I was sure I wasn’t wrong. I briefly wondered if it was some kind of breakaway independent group.

After a short mass I got to talk with Father Young. He confirmed that the building used to be Our Lady Help of Christians church but that closed down. Sometime after he/his group obtained the building as a halfway house and he began giving mass at 4pm Sunday afternoons, followed by dinner. He said everyone just calls this place Mother Theresa’s. It is not listed on the diocese website because it isn’t a church as such which I suppose would be subject to the need for a certain volume in order to remain open. He is an ordained priest who pretty much does mass because he wants to.

I also got to talk extensively with another Catholic priest named Simon Udemgba. He told me stories about Nigeria and the formation of the country (by Britain) out of two large neighboring areas of different ethnicities. As it was explained to m, because it was around the Niger River it was called Niger-Area (Nig-eria! get it?). For a long time a king in the North ran the country- with Britain’s approval of course. Now that they have been experiencing independence and democracy for a while rulers have generally come from the North. Currently there is a ruler from the East and that is very exciting.

So now that I’ve sidetracked you for a history lesson, I’ll get back to how I liked this church. My first thoughts were not encouraging. The sanctuary has kind of a worn out look to it. There were barely 30 people in attendance at mass. Once I got past these details I noticed things. Like the fact that everyone was dressed very casual and they all seemed pretty happy to be there. A portion of the mass involved all of us moving to the center aisle and holding hands. It’s something that just can’t be done at a large church. It’s a very visceral feeling that now you are connected directly with each if these people. And there was taking during mass. I mean a comfortable easy talking. Listen, there are churches where any message to be conveyed is whispered quickly so as not to disturb the stuck up lady with the perfect hairdo. And there are churches where teens who don’t give a care giggle throughout service while moms look at their watches. This church was neither of those. The people here seemed relaxed friendly and open. And by outward appearance all different from one another. Outfits, hair, skin color, and accent were all varied. Yet there was fully a sense of community. Even more than this was a sense of belonging and being ok.

I think sometimes there are certain expectations surrounding words like ‘halfway house’ and in the visual of an old looking church building or worn looking clothing. I think these ideas invade us from society and culture. Places, people and traits get lumped together and when you see an old building with houses around that have no lawns, you immediately make decisions about what sort of people you will find. They are in trouble, desperate, sad, you tell yourself. They are so needy, you reason, someone has to feed them dinner once a week. But this is all conjecture and you realize you have no idea what any of their lives are actually like. You realize calling them ‘the needy’ is ridiculous simply because they need things. Everyone does. And I am just as needy as a person who struggles financially. My church this morning said to look into their eyes. But this means they will also look into yours. I need too, and some of what I need is spending time others who are genuine. This is how the people at this church struck me. Without even knowing me or what I might need, they fed me dinner and conversation. And I still don’t know much about them. Except that maybe I need more of whatever they have.

Facebook!: Look for Mother Theresa Catholic Community – spelled like that with an h in Theresa.

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Church #41, Saint Francis of Assisi on Delaware Ave

Date: 9/22/13

Church name/type: St Francis of Assisi Delaware Ave, Roman Catholic

Pastor: Reverend Leo O’Brien

Style of worship: the usual Catholic style format with some casual bits mixed in

Overall Impression: My favorite Catholic church so far!

Thoughts:
This church was particularly refreshing. The first thing we did after announcements was to turn to our neighbor and give them a nice greeting and exchange names. This was as directed by the officiant at the time (deacon I think- I sat too far back again). He then said, “That wasn’t so bad was it?”

I noticed the announcements included a call to join small groups which I suppose meet at someone’s house about religious stuff. Also requested were donations to a food pantry and outreach efforts to give away toiletries to those in need. In fact the whole message of the day was focused on mercy and ministering to those in need. We were encouraged to ‘look into the eyes’ of a needy person. I wonder if everyone in positions with any kind privilege or power could do this, if they’d realize it is a person and not just a statistic. We heard that budget cuts to the government could threaten programs like food stamps. Maybe it’s time for contacting our reps about this. As someone who has had several close friends that utilize food stamps, I see it as a worthwhile program that needs to stay.

We also had our attention called to some of Pope Francis’ recent remarks regarding the attention we pay to various problems. The Pope said in an interview that the Catholic Church has become obsessed with certain details. He said, “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods…
It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars!”
The injured person metaphor the Pope used again highlights the focus on issues of sexuality and reproductive choices while hunger and poverty are largely ignored. I wonder, how can we call ourselves compassionate if we condemn someone for going through with an abortion while saying and doing nothing to alleviate their struggle to make ends meet (which may have even been responsible for that choice)? This disconnect is a major problem in the Catholic Church that the Pope is taking the lead trying to fix.

Here is where I found the Pope’s remarks by the way. Pope said this.

So now that I’ve sidetracked this post I’ll try and get back to how church was. I have to admit I liked it. Right towards the very end of mass the question was asked “Anybody visiting today?” I stuck my hand in the air and said thus said hello to the entire congregation. It’s the first time I’ve had this type of large-scale greeting in a Catholic church. After the dismissal song one of the deacons caught me and we got into some conversation. He said to call him Deacon Jim. He asked me a bunch of questions about my journey.

Being so prompted, I told him I was raised Catholic and experienced some difficulty finding a church to love and belong in after going away to college. I said my journey to the various churches of Albany was partly a spiritual quest and often informational if nothing else. He asked about what churches or denominations appealed to me this far. I named Presbyterian, ELCA Lutheran and the Reformed Churches. I said that I find the Catholic Church upsetting in its opposition to homosexuality. He pointed out that not only did his congregation include gay couples, but the Pope himself had been making more remarks about His discomfort with Catholic anti-gay obsessiveness (this was before I had read the interview I link above). We both wondered about where the relatively new Pope was taking us as a Church and I think we both hoped it was someplace good.

So from this interaction I learned several things. First was the encouraging bit of news that even some Catholic churches are going against the doctrine of their hierarchy and functioning in a mildly independent way. Second I see that this is still allowed within that hierarchy- St Francis Church hasn’t had to go rogue or anything. They are listed on the diocese website. This all makes me really happy about my Catholic heritage and hopeful for what else might be out there.

After mass?: No gathering time. But it does help that the deacon specifically sought me out. Also the mention of small groups at the start of mass means they are trying to build community rather than ignoring each other. And I approve of that.

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Church #40, Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Albany

Date: 9/15/13

Church name/type: Mount Calvary Baptist, part of the National Baptist Convention USA Inc

Pastor: This church is in a transition to a new pastor who hasn’t been chosen/found yet. Our guest pastor was Reverend Gertrude Harris of Macedonia Baptist Church.

Style of worship: I found the format had a surprisingly formal structure for songs, children’s time, announcements, prayer, scripture and sermon. It ran a bit long, but the length was from singing and announcements rather than a drawn-out sermon.

Overall Impression:
Seems pretty good

Thoughts:
So another baptist church with mostly black membership. This time I felt less awkward and out of place. By comparison to this church, I think I figured out why I disliked Metropolitan Baptist. The size was too big. I had this problem also with Bethlehem Community. I don’t want to go overkill describing these other two churches so I’ll just say that size matters and a church can be too small, but it can also be too big. Thankfully Mount Calvary Baptist was neither of these things.

So this church had a good bulletin. It clearly outlined all parts of service and gave numbers for the hymns in their hymnal. It also had a short statement at the top which read:

This is the house of God. Be thoughtful; be reverent. Speak to God before the service, let God speak to you during the service and speak to one another after the service.

It’s nice to have such a statement for newcomers because it sets a tone regarding expectations. Actually there was still an amount of speaking during service. I was greeted by a man sitting near me and by the entire congregation during the ‘greeting of visitors’. I was asked to say my name and anything else I would like to share. I said my first name and that I was seeing different churches around Albany. A few people came up to me after service to chat briefly as well. It was kind of nice to feel not ignored.

The sermon was energetic, but never dissolved into something unintelligible. The pastor shouted out some of the message, but in a way different from other shouted sermons I’ve heard; I’m talking about the ones where it’s all catchphrases- “God is yes. God is amen!”- Those make zero sense to me. Nor was it a simple recitation of a bible story. The sermon was about the prophet Jeremiah and the Babylonian captivity. Pastor told us Jeremiah is sometimes called the weeping prophet. He has a massive amount of bad things in his life. He was put into a pit, beaten, disowned and arrested. His whole life was changed by the Babylonian capture of the land that was Judah. Part of the Book of Lamentations is him complaining about all this. I think I would. And of course we do complain. Pastor said we find it hard waiting on God when everyone else gets — (fill in your own desired thing). But somehow the pastor managed to make the message seem hopeful. The energy with which she described our own struggles made it feel like the whole church was alive, and like struggles are not so bad. The strength of her voice and the shouts from the congregation rose to such a pitch it was as though we were talking not of sadness and struggle but of triumph and success. Then the moment passed and the sermon was ended. And I’m having trouble figuring out just what made the talk(shout) so dynamic and happy when it was something of a downer for poor Jeremiah. I guess that’s part of what to carry away from this week’s adventure. Part if life is how you see it. Sadness can increase if you see your life as sad, or decrease if you see it as hopeful. As someone who has been depressed at times I realize this answer is somewhat simplistic. Yet I’m drawn to it because it advocates examining one’s outlook. And that’s definitely one important aspect of dealing with life’s problems.

Website?: No website. They should definitely get one. Either that or a Facebook page. Great churches need websites today in our age of information. At least that’s how I see it.

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Church #39, First Church in Albany

Date: 9/8/13

Church name/type: First Church in Albany, RCA (Reformed)

Pastor: Reverend John Paarlberg

Style of worship: Casual with structure, including lots of spoken participation and musical chairs style passing of the peace

Overall Impression: good, chatty

Thoughts:
RCA churches are big in this area and the denomination seems to be a good one. It is called First Church because it was the first, existing before there was even an Albany! At the time this area was just a Dutch trading post. Of course the term ‘church’ refers to the group. No building from the 1600’s would look as good as the current structure looks.

As I normally do, I checked for a website first for the service time, which was clearly posted. The website looks pleasant and in good working order, with the sermon topic for this Sunday also up there. I cannot stress enough how good I think it is that churches have a nice functional website. My next three churches after this one do not have websites at all and I’m actually shocked that in this day and age a church would not bother with a website of any kind.

So parking was relatively easy to find, as was the church entrance and sanctuary. Before service started a woman in the row near me introduced herself and began asking me about myself. We chatted a little bit and she welcomed me upon discovering this was my first visit. I also got a chance to peruse the bulletin and read the little statement about the church. They included a bit about the community including not only a variety of ages and ethnicities but also different sexualities which are welcomed. As I understand it the RCA as a denomination is struggling with disagreement over the issue of homosexuality and gay membership. I hope eventually they work it out and come to the conclusion that First Church has come to; namely that loving someone who happens to share your gender is not intrinsically sinful.

The service went pretty much as I expected. I was able to easily follow the printed outline (another thing that a surprising number of churches fail to do). If it was my church I’d make the insert a different color for clarity, however I did figure that the middle paper was to be removed in order to follow the service. The sermon today was about creation. I heard the term “Book of Nature” for the first time. It seems to relate this idea that things in nature speak of God just as a written book does. I have encountered the idea before. The pastor was careful to state that this is not simply the equating of nature with God. Instead he contends that God had such an abundance of love that he made something outside himself that was good like he was. I’m not sure I’m totally following this metaphor, but it seems harmless enough- I mean it says God is full of love, which I strongly believe.

There was also some stuff in the sermon about taking care of God’s creation by taking care of the environment. We prayed for forgiveness that we treat earth’s resources so lightly and for the fact that we have pushed global warning along. This is nice to see from a church. Many Christian groups ignore or even deny environmental concerns. I have heard it reasoned that God created humans as special and being the center of attention, it is our right to use animals and the earth indiscriminately. I guess there are some who also believe God will eventually physically create a new earth for us if when we mess this one up. Anyway taking care of our surroundings strikes me as a better plan than making God build us a new planet.

After the sermon we took communion. This church has a long table set up in the center aisle for everyone to sit at during communion. Everyone doesn’t use it, but they could. Those who stay in place have an usher to bring them bread and juice. We were told that it’s usual to eat the bread immediately and take the juice as a group. I liked the instruction here. It made me feel like I knew just what to do. After church several people invited me to what they call ‘coffee and conversation’. I talked with several people and handed out some website cards. So overall it was a pretty nice Sunday.

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Absorbed churches

So I’m going through my list of churches and correcting it. I have added several churches and cancelled several churches. The additions are those churches not in the phone book from last year. It seems the phone book also categorizes certain no-longer-functioning churches as churches. This is especially true of Catholic churches. I’m finding many instances where a church had to merge with another church. It’s a weird feeling seeing all these old parishes gone and wondering about their membership. Because these are Catholic churches I presume the closures were not because of dwindling membership but probably lack of priests. That’s been a problem in Catholic churches for more than a few years. Here are the churches that seem to have merged:
Our Lady Help of Christians
Web searches for this church lead either to the Cathedral or to the still extant cemetery called Our Lady Help Christians. A found a source suggesting this church used the building in the South End area on the corner of Second Avenue and Krank Street. I drove by this building and it’s clear someone is using this building as a church. There is a sign advertising church at 4pm. This probably means another group took the building and is either renting or bought it.
St John’s and St Ann’s
Due to the already joint name, it seems this church represented two joined parishes which then merged with another parish. All signs on the internet point to the merge location as St Francis of Assisi South End.

As usual I welcome any better information readers out there might have on these closed churches. Just leave a comment.

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Church #38, Iglesia Pentecostal

Date:8/25/13

Church name/type: Iglesia Pentecostal, some type of Pentecostal I imagine. This was a Spanish speaking church. Iglesia is the Spanish word for church BTW.

Pastor: I’m not actually sure of the pastor’s name. She was a non-English speaker and we only interacted a little.

Style of worship: first prayer, then scripture mixed with song, sermon, and more intense prayer- The entire thing took a little over three hours. The songs were repetitive and with breaks for short witness-type explanations (God put this in my heart). The sermon was also something like an hour.

Overall Impression: Actually was a pretty short three hours.

Thoughts: Admittedly I was terrified of this particular week’s church. The door says 11am – 2pm; that’s three hours potentially all in Spanish. I took some Spanish in high school but it’s been a long time. However, from the start it actually felt pretty comfortable. People smiled at me and tried to accommodate me in English as I spoke my bad Spanish at them. The music was loud and fun, as well as repetitive enough to catch onto the words eventually. This church also had a nice range of diversity in its membership. A few of the members probably identify as black; from that all the way to the little blonde girl made a wide variety of brown shades. I fit just fine in that respect. There was English translation of the service by a bilingual member. She really impressed me. Translation on the fly is hard, and it’s not like she was a professional translator or anything.

Much of the service was fun, comfortable and interesting. There were, however parts of the message I don’t think I can get behind. Some of it was the usual ‘we have the truth and no one else does’ type stuff. And there was an odd amount of focus on demons. We prayed to expel demons at the start of worship and we learned that demons can mess with you if you aren’t wearing God’s armor (faith and love). The story of Daniel and the cloud of demons around him was referenced. So many demons were surrounding him, it took God’s angel a week to get to him- if I remember the story correctly. Also there was a heavy focus on God being behind bad things that happen. We heard that story from Acts where Paul tells a couple to give money to the church. Paul knows they are withholding cash from the church. When they act surprised, Paul scolds them and they fall down dead one after another. Am I supposed to believe God will strike me down dead if I lie? Chilling. Although it is hard to get a complete sense from another language how closely this is actually believed.

Would I go back?: Maybe. The friendliness is a strong positive factor. And this place probably had my favorite music so far.