Church #4. Garneau United Church

           By request of one of my good face book friends I decided to check out a United church today. Not to say that I haven’t been to a united church before. I have been to a few different ones on occasion but,  gotta have a fresh one for the blog.

 So I rolled my butt out of bed this morning to walk 6 blocks to go check out this place. It is in one odd looking building set up for a church. It is pretty much an open meeting area of the entry way to a very fancy apartment complex. But it works…. The service is mostly seniors and there were 24 people-ish? Including a few parents and their kids. The reverend was a very warm fellow, Santa clause like in appearance, who is accompanied by his wife who also preaches. Here was notably what would look like middle school science poster displaying a scientific diagram of the earth hanging from the podium. The alter was something interesting, lol. It was apparently a sermon on themed on “fonna and flora” and “the season of creation”. so the alter and the table in front of it was covered in fish nest with wildlife pics attached to it with a plant sitting on it and a blow of fruit and of course the rainbow candle.

This particular United congregation is a certified “Affirming congregation” which means that they have decided to accept sexual diversity as a gift, not a sin and that gay people can be members and leaders of the church.

            There was a lot of singing in this church, and despite the age and limited abilities of its patrons, I do really fell like there was some very real worshiping going on (I felt a lacking that in some of the last few sad to say) . 

             I got to talk to the reverend and his wife afterwards and he is a top notch guy but what I really give him credit for is his work with the kids. During the service he ask the children to bring out the “magic carpet” which they did, and placed it at the center front of the church . And despite what I am sure were very well warn knees and hips the reverend carefully lowered himself down to it on the carpet with the children to do their special lesson for the day. The even bigger thing to me is that in that lesson he looked the kids in the eye and honestly admitted to them they he had done “a bad thing” when he tells the tale that he cut down a tree in his yard ,that they latter discovered to be over 100 years old, and now regrets doing so.  

            Over all I was very impressed and I am thankful for my experience today at the Garneau United Church and the new read i was given “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism” by John Shelby Spong.

            Love you guys! You ROCK!