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 .
