Monday, January 13, 2014

Church #11. Mckernan Baptist Church.



Sing it on high! Yes it is now time for what you have all been waiting for, your favorite stereotypically overly enthusiastic church. The Baptists’.
 This was the first church service I have been to yet that is inside a school gym ( ok so it was only temporally, church building was under mass renos.) As I walked in the side entrance to the school I noticed one major thing, this place is packed. You know, some places say “family church” but none of them live up to it like this place when I say the whole family was there I  mean the WHOLE  family mom, dad,  92 year old grand ma, baby, little sister 15 year old brother, 25 year old university student in short EVERYBODY.
The nice part is also that they have their services split up. So I noticed a lot of patents with little kids and babies that were leavening, while all the 20 something year old university students piled in. Roughly 100 people at this one. Which for someone like me who has zero tolerance for children screaming or crying in public….EVER. It is such a blessing to have a separate service.
It was also the first case I saw where there were almost a perfectly even number of men to women standing in a church service of that university age range. (City Center church was a similar story, slightly younger crowd and like 300 more people but there was probably 95% women and 5% guys. ) but even with the 55% female population at this church I am still noticing this consistent trend of skirt wearing.
A lot of the service was led by the “worship team” aka a 7 piece rocking band consisting of a mixture of college kids and middle aged people. During the whole service I was shocked to see that the most animated people were actually the older generation ( on this case 40-60 year olds) all the college kids in the room just stood there  with their hands in their pockets chilling, while the 12 or so baby boomers were in full worship mode with feet dancing and hands held high.
The theme of the days service was True hope vs. False hope. I found it enlightening. I distinctively remember when the offering was being passed around and I don’t think I have ever seen a plate so empty for the amount of people that were in the room. I guess that is what happens when you are trying to hold a service for college students that are deeply in debt. 
As you can guess, a whole lot of singing in this church, which is always fun. I am finding that there are certain worship songs that must be more popular than others because there is one song out there, and I think half of the random churches that I have been to so far, use this same song. And for good reason, it’s fun to sing: P  .
The traveling speaker we had was super awesome, he dressed up and was acting as a time period charter and he told a story from the bible but he spoke it as personal account of Ananias, who was just this regular guy who god spoke to and gave him a special job. Which was pretty much to go pray for Saul of Tarsus,  the one dude that was out to persecute and murder every practicing Christian in the middle east.  I will drop you a link so you can read the rest to see how it all ends .  http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/apostle-paul-biography-and-profile/
One last tid bit, I found another cause of the use of the term (root of Jesse) referring to Mary’s grandfather. And apparently this Jessie dude Is descended of king David. Or are they? Matters what catholic priest you talk to…lol. More on that in our next article. Stay tuned kids .