Churches, like pubs, are places of great social value. Churchgoers are much like loyal barflies, in that they stray not far from their favorite places and rely on the establishment to provide them with a large piece of their social lives. In North America, it would be a reasonable assumption that each church has about a hundred regular attendees. It could be said that each following operates much like a gang/clique, in that each member holds some allegiance to their specific brand of religion and its associated social group over any other. Everybody knows that there are others out there, but most likely few have ventured far outside the known world.
Some interesting questions arise when thinking about churches. There are just so damn many of them. Who is going to church these days? What's happening in those buildings anyhow? Why do the divisions exist? How is Church A different from Church B?
Anyways, to answer these questions, we decided to do a church crawl.
Every weekend, or close to every weekend, we will try to attend a different church - if we're allowed in. Just cause we can, and cause we really don't have anything to do sunday mornings. During the afternoon, we also hope to try a different pub or eatery in the neighbourhood for the same reason.
Our first venture is the local Seventh Day Adventist Church.
The Seventh Day Adventist (SDA)
The most intriguing thing about the SDA was that services were held on a saturday. This is a huge difference to most churches that we're used to. On first thought, one could complain about waking up so early on a saturday, but then again, if you have service on saturday you could sleep in on sunday.
Anyways, a church that meets on a saturday was deemed a different enough candidate for the first unlucky visit from our crawlers.
The fun started immediately after we entered the door. We were greeted by nice friendly people with expressions that told us they knew we were new in town. So we signed the guestbook.
Then we sat down and tried not to look suspicious. The interior was quite plain but also quite nice. A large projector was setup to display on a retractable screen in front of the stage, and the church was also outfitted with James Bond-like retractable blinds that were adjusted a number of times throughout the service. It was a little eerie.
First thing that happened was that some guy got up and explained that the truck parked out front needed to move. I'm not too sure if it did.
While I can't really remember the exact order of the service, I believe it started with a short prayer then a talk about thithe and offerings, followed by moving the little red baskets down the aisles collecting the envelopes they had just handed out.
Following the offerings, the SDA then busted out their laptop and powerpoint projections. Five singers, each with a different coloured fuzzy microphone (almost sportscaster-ish) lead the church in song with meter high lyrics being displayed in the background. In the middle of the song, one man kind of had an interlude where he talked about how this time of year was especially cool.
Around this time, one of the little kids dove under the pew which served to incredibly aggravate his mother, while another energetic kid feverishly paced back and forth.
Couples of the congregation were then invited to a "Marriage Retreat" to experience a romantic weekend of "passion, intimacy and commitment". The resort looked pretty damn cool. I wanted to get hitched just so I could take part.
After all the songs and talk of romance subsided, a guy got up and led a prayer in which he described a very personal experience which brought him to God. It was a pretty cool story. Others were invited to get up and share a story of their own. It seemed as if they do this a lot.
The prayer ended, with one impatient kid in front quietly whispering "That was the longest prayer ever!" in a tone reminiscent of The Incredibles.
The pastor then went up and stood behind a table with a huge cloth covering it, while two big guys sat on either side of him. He went into a rant about how Jesus ate with both sinners and tax collectors. Looking at everyone, he spoke like he was leading an army into battle. He explained how they should not spend all their time with the good of the world, but rather with the sinners and tax collectors. I spent most of the time calling my buddy who previously worked for Revenue Canada a sinner.
During the whole time a nice woman was telling us about all the bible studies we could attend. She knew we weren't regulars so she spent time collecting information about us and telling us which classes we could attend. One time, she leant over and asked, "Are you mormons?"
We did look like mormons, I guess. It's a safe bet that two males walking around the neighbourhood wearing mostly black and interested in churches are either mormon or jehovah's witnesses. Oh well. I said no.
Another kid in front started flossing his teeth with a shoelace and staring at us.
The rant about tax collectors ended, and communion started. People came around with trays of crackers (because fermentation is evil) and after the nice lady said we could take part I immediately took one and gobbled it up. In other places I've attended it was the norm to eat the cracker as soon as you receive it. I looked around and quickly noticed that nobody else had ate their cracker. See, everybody is supposed to eat their cracker at the same time. Unwritten rule I guess. Embarrassed, I then folded my hand in such a way to hopefully appear that I was holding the now nonexistent cracker. Mr Revenue Canada noticed the goof and generously donated half of his body of christ cracker to me.
The nice lady didn't seem to notice. She may not have believed that we weren't really mormons anyways.
After eating our crackers, the pastor's aides then came around with small shot glasses full of grape juice (Fermentation. Evil.) This time I was wise enough to leave the juice alone until the man said go. The plan wouldn't really work if people didn't drink their grape juice at the same time, now would it?
Oh yeah, and before this, there was inevitably more singing that I've neglected to mention. I noticed that each pronoun related to God had been capitalized. I knew people did that already, it just occured to me during the song(s) how much that would mess someone up. Wouldn't you feel like an ass if you did or didn't capitalize "Him" in the right context? I'm pretty sure that the kid pacing the pews up front probably gets a talking to from his english teacher a lot.
After the service was over, we were going to find a new pub and see what was going on there. That plan was thwarted, however, when the SDA announced they were having a potluck downstairs.
The food at the potluck was great, which is notable because it was all vegetarian. Buddy explained the meaning of TVP. Foods with acronyms. Cool. Didn't taste bad either. Depending on the price, I may be a TVP convert.
The potluck proved to be a great place for a number of interesting discussions:
SDA Guy: "So you're Catholic?"
Me: "I'm kinda Catholic."
SDA Guy: "What, Anglican?"
One of the congregation jokingly explained that the sacrifice was going to happen at 5 o'clock. I volunteered Mr. Revenue Canada to take part.
Overall, the SDA crew were a friendly and fun bunch of people, and if you're apt to go to church on Saturdays, check it out.
Our next location is To Be Determined, feel free to suggest a place!
Note: I just googled for "church crawl" and it turns out that some people have taken this a lot more seriously in some instances...