Churchin'

One of my goals this Summer was to find a church. I haven't had much in the way of good experiences with organized religion. There are two kinds of churches I've found. The "modern" variety are fun and welcoming, but they seem to have sucked all the religion out of "religion." The "traditional" churches still care for doctrine, but they are not fun, nor are they welcoming, and a lot of their members seem to be more interested in condemning others than they are in saving themselves.

There's a great quote from the movie "Saved!" (which is actually a hilarious movie, and does a good job at showing the kind of religious hypocrisy I loathe). One of the characters throws a bible at someone, and the girl picks it up and says "This is not a weapon... idiot."

So, as part of my continued quest to find a place of worship to call my own, I went to my girlfriend's church today. It was interesting. The service itself is modern. I really don't like modern services. They play contemporary Christian music, which... just sucks. I'm sorry, but modern Christian music utterly blows. Don't believe me? Turn on a Christian rock station and see how long you can stand it. It's horrible. There was about 20 minutes of that, and then the sermon. The sermon was actually pretty good. The pastor is from Jamaica, so he had a cool accent (halfway between British and Jamaican), and he offered multiple interpretations (including of course, his own) of the passages we looked at. The fact that he was open to multiple viewpoints, and not chained to orthodoxy was good. Against the backdrop of the service though, the sermon lost a lot of its power. Plus I won't be living in this city after graduation. Bah.

The search continues.