encounters of a congregational kind

So yesterday we visited the United Congregational Church, as the Amazing Race would say - in this first leg of my journey. They are a group that is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, which has recently taken the initiative to re-work their public image in the face of a losing battle with declining membership (especially in the 20-35 age range). The church was on the smaller side, I would say their worship hall could hold maybe 200 people if they squeezed. My first impression as the service started was that worship was going to be more non-denominational styled but with some ceremony, I say this because the organist, choir, and pastor all wore robes (I know that's not the right terminology, oh well). There were announcements where anyone in the congregation could chime in from their seats, and then things started to diverge from my initial impressions. To start off the actual worship time, they started with a candle lighting and then we moved into a song and some group creed recitation. I started to feel like I needed 4 arms to really stay with the service as we flipped from song hymnal to bulletin, to bulletin inserts, to Scripture and back to hymnal. One aspect I found rather endearing, at least this time, prior to children leaving to go to Sunday school there was a Children's Message, kind of a mini-worship for the kids. All the small children went to the front and gathered for a lesson and collection, then went to classes while we all sang. I personally found the lesson given to the children could have been expounded upon and given to the rest of the congregation as an extension during service. However, instead we moved on to the rest of the adult worship. Strangely enough, the scripture readings were identical to what we had heard Saturday afternoon at the Catholic mass, and the sermon was pretty much on par with the Catholic homily. We couldn't decide if this was a regular thing, or just something that happens during Lent. While Claire enjoyed the more polished and orderly aspects, she and I both agreed that something like the Children's message while interesting, if repeated each week could become tiresome (imagine sitting through 10 minutes of kindergarten story time in the middle of service). On the other hand, I found the tightly defined structure of worship to be too predictable and manufactured. While there were a few moments of personality infused into the service, it felt forced and I find services to be much more inspiring and enjoyable when things are more personal or narrative. We will probably go back and visit again after Lent is over, so we can see whether or not the parallel worship topics is coincidence or not. While they did have a coffee hour after service, we opted not to stay since I wanted to mull things over a bit. On another line of thought, I did notice while we were there that they did seem to have an aging population - probably 80% or more were over 40. Yes, I do know that this is somewhat to be expected since the 20-35 group that we are in is the declining or missing population in many churches today.

I'll have to figure out which church to visit next, I am thinking about another UCC affiliated one, but this one also has what they call an Alternative Worship Experience (contemporary music, light supper, etc). However, they do not seem to offer that on an on-going basis, it seems to be more of a planned event. The other option I was thinking about is heading back to the church I first started visiting when we moved here. While I have what I consider irreconcilable differences with them, I keep getting this nagging feeling like I should go back one more time. Although that is hard to do when the people there that I talk to have a "we're right, they're wrong" attitude towards other denominations and questioning their interpretations of Scripture means you are wrong too. That kind of closed-minded self-righteousness just rubs me the wrong way, and I fear going back there can only lead to a very heated and public confrontation. Let's just say that for those who didn't know, I started an email conversation with the preacher expressing my desire to share my faith and lead a class or discussion group... and let's just say the conversation was twisted around into a conversion since my interpretation and ideas didn't mesh with his. I would have continued the conversation, but I would bring up new points which he would ignore, jump back to one thing that I wrote that had no bearing on the topics and use that as a launching point for a mini-lecture. *Sigh* Enough venting, need to back to work.