You may have noticed that it has been a while since the last installment of oneChurchaWeek. You see what had happened was…we spent one weekend on a cruise and well that’s all I’ve got excuse wise. This was not meant to stop us, I swear to you, I was ready for cruise ship church. We* are Royal Caribbean platinum members so I’ve read enough Cruise Compass daily activity guides to know one bar somewhere on the boat is a church for about 60 minutes on Sunday morning, and I was determined to find it and pray I could bring my Bahama-mama to the service.
*”We” are actually not both members, I’ve been perpetually too lazy to call and get my member number so only Brian has actually registered for the perks.**
**By “perks” I mean one free drink coupon, that you have to ask your room attendant to bring every time, because they somehow always "forget" to have it in the room.
To my dismay, this was a short cruise on one of the fleet’s smaller ships, so all Sunday morning offered was some 8am blackjack and Coors Light in a bottle shaped can or the Joel Osteen telecast. I can do a lot of things, I’ve eaten cricket tacos, I’ve worked in a public housing project, I landed in the Cairo airport in a tank-top and shorts (at the same time as an airbus from Saudi Arabia where I literally accounted for 90% of the exposed female skin in the terminal) the point is I’ll do a lot of things, but we are not deep enough into this little experiment for me to watch a Joel Osteen telecast. I actually forgot which one was Joel Osteen, so I did google him, and holy hair-gel I was not about to watch that on my vacation.
Side note we were in Florida and on the cruise following a wedding that was held on Thursday in a church, but then we left the service early to help coordinate the reception set up. Regardless, I’m pretty sure half of a Catholic wedding ceremony combined with googling Joel Osteen pretty much counts as church.
That brings us to week #6.5 back home and ready for slightly less of a copout. I said Baptist and remembered one near Costco. So we were off. We didn’t particularly dress up, but who needs to these days. I’d looked up the church and it looked pretty multi-cultural, the pastor was black and it looked like his wife was Chinese. Never once did I think through the oxymoron that is “Baptist and multi-cultural” I thought it would be good. As we pull into the parking lot, Brian turns to me and asks “is this a black church.” “No” I reply with the same ungrounded confidence I have in my ability to fix electronics, bake and do any number of things I have no business doing. This is what follows
Brian: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Of course, his wife is Korean or something, and the guy in that car over there is white”
Brian: “I think he’s just turning around in the parking lot”
Me: (turning my head to follow his car) “yup, yup he is”
Brian: “Have you ever heard of a non-black church with an African-American preacher.”
Me: “Of course”
Brian: “name one”
Me: “Lots of them, what does it matter?”
Brian: “Have you ever been to a black church”
Me: “nope”
Brian: “I’m not going in there in jeans, every guy will be in a suit”
Me: “that lady over there is wearing jeans”
Brian: “too bad, what is plan B, we can come here next week in better clothes”
Me: “there was a cop directing traffic a few miles back”
Brian: “do you want to look it up’
Me: “no I’m sure it’s fine”
Turns out it was. Cops don’t have a lot to do in Northern Virginia on a Sunday morning so if you see one in the street it is a good sign that there is some Jesus worshiping nearby. The downside of going to a random church that is just on the way to the one you planned to go to…is it might end up being exactly like one you already went to.
Week 6.5 Reston Bible Church, yup, you’re right, the last blog was McLean Bible Church. If nothing else it should validate that the conversation above actually took place, I don’t just make this stuff up. It turns out that Reston Bible Church is kinda the emo rock little brother to McLean Bible Church. I think just by attending, we brought the average age of the congregation up about a year and a half. As expected, the first 30 minutes was a Jesus themed alternative rock concert. The front man even sported a mohawk on top of a buttoned up cardigan on top of a graphic print tee, on top of fitted designer jeans, on top of red sneakers. Indi rock all day long, well for about 30 minutes until it gave way to the preacher. He could easily be the grandfather of 90% of his followers. To be honest, his sermon was a lot like a grandpa story. It was a long, rambling mixture of events that supposedly happened years ago and some stuff going on today. Except he was not drawing from depression era memories of soup lines or turning in scrap metal to support the war effort, he was going on and on about Abraham and Lot maybe or just “a lot” about Abraham. I’m not sure really, I did gather that non believers are going to hell. That was definitely mentioned, but I knew that from the last Bible Church visit, give me something new.
Oh I did learn something new: “advancing the kingdom” it is emo church for “convert the hedonist.” I also learned that evangelicals think that “the first time a subject is mentioned in the bible, expresses God’s view on the subject.” That seems like a sound judgment call, and helps with selective literal interpretations that we touched on in my last blog. I know I’m writing this a few days after the church service, but I’m not misquoting that, I wrote it down. I heard that, out of everything, out of 40 minutes about Abraham, I heard that, woke right up, got out a pen a scribbled it on the bulletin right over the prayer request for a kid who got a concussion and broken ankle while snowboarding and whose mom is still seeking Christ. One more time…“the first time a subject is mentioned in the bible, expresses God’s view on the subject.” All the other times, eh not so much. God’s view is only in the context of the first time something is mentioned.
To prove how logical that really is, I wanted to find the first page of the bible and enlighten you all on how God feels about some subject, probably the creation, I would assume that is one page one. I’m way too lazy to walk upstairs and search the office bookshelves for a bible, a search that I’m sure would be in vain (sorry Grandma). Instead I googled, so I apologize if this is contextually incorrect, but this is how God feels about earth: “earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Done, that is how he feels, God thinks earth is void darkness. At least the King James God does, I’m done web searching so I’m sticking with that. Also when I searched for “first page of the bible” I found the following and thought it was funny enough to paste in here:
The Real First Page of the Bible
They recently discovered a smaller scroll hidden in the cylinder of the first scroll of the ancient Biblical scriptures, believed to be the actual "first page" of the Bible. When deciphered, it read:
"Copyright (c) 300 B.C. God. All Rights Reserved First scrawling First-Sunrise-After-Stonehenge-Keystone-Is-Shadowed, 300 B.C.
All beings, places and events depicted in this work are fictional, and any resemblance to actual beings, places and events past, present or future is purely coincidental.
WARNING: Some of the actions performed in this work are dangerous and should only be attempted by professionals familiar with the action in question.
NOTE: Those tiny points of light in the sky when it gets dark are called 'stars'. Some of them do blow up on occasion. In no way should this be construed as a sign that there is, beneath such an explosion, any form of savior. Should such a misconstrual happen, the author will not be held responsible for the avalanche of arrogance, zeal, bigotry, humanocentricity and other vile acts which will surely follow the residents of the planet into time eternal until someone sees fit to erase the denizens of the world and let the author start over.
DSBN 0-000000-0000-1
Suggested retail: 1 sheep."
