burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

I got there about twenty minutes early (T-ing from Harvard right after work).  There was a table with supplies for namecards, only I didn't see any empty name cards, so I just plopped myself down in a pew while folks set up the worship space. 

( order of worship, with commentary, including discussion of Communion )

***

At one point, I was telling Sue about how CAUMC-Eric thinks I should be a Phantom ChurchGoer and blog about it.  She mentioned Ship Of Fools, which once she mentioned it I realized I think I'd heard of before (she said she thinks it's run by Methodists, so that makes sense that I might have heard of it before).  It's a very specific questionnaire, so definitely different than Ari's 6-axis scale (liturgy, music, welcome, preaching, communion, GLBT-affirming).

***

This is the email I sent the following Tuesday: ( Read more... )

July 5 is LizL's installation at Waltham, so after that I have 6 Sundays (August 2 I'm at WriterCon, September 6 I'm at Convo, and some weekend I'm going up to FUH's place in Maine). This is not as many as I'd been thinking I'd have -- though admittedly it's more than, for example, Advent allots.

Before I'd realized this, I'd been doing Google searches to get a sense of what my options were in my area (translation: which denominations I haven't already attended have worship services in my area). And I found a bunch of churches that don't seem to have any denominational affiliation, and I've come to understand better why people react the way they do when I say that the church I grew up in was "non-denominational" (though apparently the current website says "interdenominational"). To me, the term has always meant simply that I don't have a denominational affiliation (which is still true, though I'll usually say "low-church Protestant" when pressed to describe myself, since that's a more accurate descriptor of the parts that are important to me), but now I have a better sense of what people are likely thinking of when they hear "non-denominational."

I was still thinking, "Why am I doing this?" I mean, I'm checking out churches I'm fairly certain going in I won't want to make my church home (or even a second church home -- since I already have a church home at CWM). Admittedly, some of it's just a sort of anthropologocal curiosity as to how other people do church.

Then I was doing some blogrolling and read a post about Annual Conference [the author is in Missouri; ours -- yes, CWM is "my" church, so more and more I think of United Methodism as "ours" ... sidebar: is CWM not listed because we're a "mission" of the Annual Conference, or is it just really outdated? -- is next week] and it occurred to me that one thing about visiting other churches is to explore why these churches are thriving, what it is their parishioners love about making their church home there. It's easy for us to say that more conservative churches are growing because people want certainty, and that explanation is actually one I'm more comfortable with now than I used to be, but I still think that can't be the whole answer.

I was feeling frustrated that all the churches I found that didn't have a denominational affiliation looked theologically conservative. Where are the radical congregations like Cambridge Welcoming? [And yes, I know CWM is very much a part of a denomination.] Before Rest and Bread tonight, Jeff mentioned Common Cathedral and Outdoor Church. Those are really places I should check out, to look at really non-traditional ways of doing church, really embodying the radical hospitality that Jesus lived out.

***

I was looking at Highrock's website (I think they're friends with SCBC) and hey, sermon podcasts.

Title Prayer Month: The 7 S's of the Lord's Prayer
Date 05/17/2009
Speaker Gary Parrett

( notes )