Friday, February 13, 2009

Attack of the Church Folk

I've been church hunting with a couple friends of mine. Last Sunday we visited a new church. It was small and most of the people there were middle aged or older. I didn't much enjoy the service, the pastor was very difficult to follow and wasted probably 15 minutes on a very strange demonstration which represented I'm not sure what. I also had difficulty figuring out how he got his message about Resurrection (he did have some good points) from the passage he was using- the two seemed only vaguely connected.

After the service finally ended (it wasn't even a long service) all I wanted was to book it out of there as fast as possible. On our way out, however, we were waylaid by a very freindly woman who thought we must be new since she had never seen us before- a correct assumption. She spent a few minutes chatting with us and rather impressed me by remembering throughout her entire dialogue with us what each of our names and majors were.
She told us that their church unfortunately didn't have many college age kids (thanks, I already noticed that) and didn't have a college group.
"Not a problem", thought I, "We're not going to come back here anyway".
She told us some more about the church and the small groups they had and then said that she'd go find the leader of her small group and bring him to meet us.
"Ugh, I'm hungry, I don't care, I want to leave" thought I as I smiled politely.
She returned shortly and informed us that she couldn't find the man she had set off to find but she had brought this other man to meet us (who he was I have no idea).
He chatted with us while the energetic woman disappeared again. After a couple minutes she returned bringing with her two people- a college age boy and a man who turned out to be the leader of the "non-existent" college groupn. She and the other mysterious man left us with these two.
They told us all about the college group. The man, after saying many times that he didn't want us to feel pressured or overwhelmed ("Thanks, too late"), invited us to their meeting that evening. Neither of these to knowledgeable though amiable individuals knew the location of the house where they meet every Sunday. The boy went off to call the young man who resides in said house. Then who shoudl come walking by but the young man's parents! who also didn't know his address. Helpful. Finally the boy returned triumphantly with the address in hand. This was entrusted to my care ("oh thanks, I'll keep this safe, since a certainly plan on attending").
"Don's feel pressured to come, but it's going to be a lot of fun", they told us. "But we don't want you to feel pressured"
Finally after being told several more times how we shouldn't feel pressured to come and how much fun they had hanging out together, we were allowed to leave.

I can say this for them; they're very freindly, if not a tad overbearing. I think it goes without saying that we do not plan on going there a second time.

1 comment:

Janella said...

I know how you feel! Like I told you, we experienced this when we visited churches after moving to Everett. It's kind of scary being "attacked" by church folk, though they have the best of intentions.

One does feel a bit sorry for them, but maybe they just don't know any better...