I hesitate to write about this because I have no idea if anyone from my church has found my blog. I doubt it, but you never know…I decided to go ahead anyway, because I’m really struggling and I seem to do better if I write things out.
Mike and I started attending church a little over a year ago. The congregation accepted us with open arms and everyone has been incredibly nice. The kids love going and Maggie has loved playing in the nursery room since day one. Burke has just started to let us leave him down there, but he’s loving it now as well. Logan hates it when we rush out, but he enjoys playing as well. And all of the ‘Tweens who help out down there seem to really get a kick out of all 3 kids. (They even give me hugs – which is cool.)
Many of the adults in the church are much older than we are, but like I said – they welcome us with open arms. There are others there our age, with kids about the same age as our kids (mostly a little older though). Not a LOT of kids in the church, but I’m fairly certain that that’s actually the norm in our area.
So what’s the struggle? I don’t love the minister. Talking with him one-on-one is okay – he’s grown on me over the past year. But listening to him preach takes a lot out of me. His messages are…well, preachy. (For example, the message I took away last week was “The World is Wrong.” Not really the best message – in my opinion.) And the entire service is so … down. I mean, I swear this guy finds the darkest passages and the darkest hymns and builds his sermons around them. I can understand “dark” every once in a while…but you really don’t have to look that hard to find uplifting passages and hymns. To top it off, most of the messages are pretty accusatory. (“If you have money in your pocket, you’re not doing the word of God.” And lots of “You must”s and “Never do”s … I guess I’m just not an absolutest.)
To be fair, I had two amazing ministers while growing up and it’s hard to not compare things to them. Both have incredible senses of humor – a must in my book. And their messages were almost always (if not entirely) uplifting. They never made me feel like I was being accused of doing – or not doing – something, but I “got” the messages they were sending. I suppose it helped that they were both close family friends as well…
I guess my point is, if you can get your messages across without all the doom and gloom, why do people still use it?
Filed under: deep thoughts | Tagged: church, doom and gloom | 8 Comments »
The Zimmer Zoo 