Well I wish I could say that we visited an awesome church this weekend, but I can’t. This is fine with me though, because I knew beforehand that it wasn’t going to be incredible. So why go? Well, basically because we had Katy’s mom visiting us and we wanted to just do the most convenient thing, which turned out to be attending the church right across the intersection from our apartment complex.

Now, I didn’t say that the experience wasn’t amusing or interesting. After all, the church across the street happens to be Presbyterian. I haven’t attended a Presbyterian church since the couple of years my family were members of one when we lived in California. I was only in 2nd and 3rd grade (I don’t know how old I was exactly) so I don’t remember a ton, but I do remember that it wasn’t a typical Presbyterian church. It was a California church…our pastor enjoyed surfing, etc.

But let’s talk about where we went yesterday. It was definitely different than my other church in California. This church was PCA, which I believe is the more doctrinally sound partition of the Presbyterian denomination. This church was semi-high church I guess. The pastor and ministers wore robes, the service was highly liturgical, heavily saturated with responsive readings, hymns, formal, scripted prayers, and standing during the reading of God’s Word. This was all very refreshing for me to observe and participate in. I’m definitely not used to worshipping that way, but I think it’s probably healthy for me to see and understand how much of the rest of the world worship.

I should probably mention that I hadn’t had my morning coffee, and I miscalculated the fact that they didn’t serve donuts and coffee here, so I found myself yawning a good deal and feeling how bloodshot my eyes were. I think I would’ve dozed off if it weren’t for the responsive readings and constant standing and sitting.

Now the pastor of this church was quite a character in my opinion. He was a chubby, jolly fellow, thirty-something years old and obviously very animated. He read the scriptures and readings with a great deal of passion, but I couldn’t deny some evidence of artificial enthusiasm. I think he was passionate about what he was reading and preaching about, but it seemed to me that he was “turning it up a notch” for the sake of engaging the congregation.

His sermon was both good and bad. First, it was good in the sense that it was biblical, expositive for the most part, and theologically sound. The aspect about it that bothered me the most was the form of his presentation. Now, I know some of us have taken preaching classes, so you understand what I’m talking about when I say that he manuscripted his sermon. This is not at all a bad method in my mind–I have manuscripted several of my own sermons and I find it effective if you can engage your audience. But this guy didn’t. He was dynamic and passionate in his preaching, but because of the language in his sermon, it felt like it was indeed a sermon on paper. He never made any personal references, mentioned himself in the first person, or mentioned the congregation he was preaching to. It was very “third person” feeling—very high church feeling.

All I could think about during the sermon and the other parts of the service was the word “relevance”. The liturgy was great for someone like me, who knows about liturgy, responsive readings, old hymns, and biblical language, but I couldn’t help but think how painful it would be for someone who has never attended church or picked up a Bible or hymnal. If I were a lost person, with an apprehension about church, I would absolutely hate this experience. I could maybe understand that this is how they worship and everything, but it’s definitely not comfortable for someone from the outside. It makes me wonder how they win people to Christ besides the children that are brought up in the church. How do they grow, besides receiving new members from other Presbyterian churches, etc.? They very well may be winning lost souls and growing—in fact, they just moved into the building we were meeting in. But I can’t help but speculate that someone from outside the church would be uncomfortable here and probably misunderstand much about the Christian faith.

I forgot to mention how communion went! Now I don’t know if they do communion every week, but we were lucky enough to participate in this ordinance two weeks in a row now. They did the Lord’s Supper in a very typical fashion, passing the plates of crackers and juice. The crackers were just those big square saltine things, broken up into pieces. I thought they were ok, but could’ve used some salt like real saltines. When the juice came around, I noticed that the mini cups were two colors. Most of them were clear, like normal, but some were pink. I was confused about this at first, but I would understand in a moment. I didn’t see anyone take a pink one, so in a moment of conformity, I grabbed a clear one like everyone else. As soon as I passed the tray down the row, I detected a familiar, but not all too familiar scent. This juice was not Welch’s. As soon as I began to wonder if my beloved Welch’s might have been contained in those pink mini cups, the pastor instructed us to drink and I had to quickly put down what was easily one of the foulest beverages I have ever tasted. After detecting the burn of the beverage going down my chest, I decided that this had to be the worst wine they could get their hands on. Katy later noted that they maybe wanted to use the worst wine they could find in order to remind us of the bitterness of Christ’s sacrifice. Now, most everyone knows that I don’t drink. Not at all. I don’t drink wine, beer, champagne, margaritas, nothing. I have some convictions on the matter, but the honest truth is that I don’t like the stuff. Of what I have smelled and sipped, it has all been foul—and I don’t intend to acquire a taste for something I don’t even desire to drink. With all that said, it should be noted that this is just another experience that confirms my taste preferences along with my convictions. This stuff was nasty. I couldn’t wait to go to lunch and get that stuff off of my breath. Oh, how I wish I picked the pink cup! This is what I mean about someone from the outside feeling lost in this church service. You just have to be Presbyterian to know this kind of stuff! You have to let us wine-haters know which cup has the sweet nectar that is Welch’s!

So after it’s all said and done, I guess the analysis would be that this is not a fit. Irrelevant liturgy, disconnecting preaching, and foul wine adds up to a church not cut out for Katy and I. So, next week will be another church, another visit, and another installment of Church Visiting.