Denominational Woes

Because we've moved around so much during Ward's military career, we've had a chance to sample many different denominations within the Christian church. We began our religious experience by joining an Episcopal church. We studied there, we were baptized as adults, and were confirmed. It is still my favorite way to worship. The Episcopal church is imploding with all of the differences going on between diocese, but it does just boil down to staying true to scripture or interpreting to what itching ears want to hear. Sure it might make you feel better, but I want to make sure I'm right with God, not man.

Anyway, that all brings me to the topic of my title. When we got here we did try the post chapels, but we just didn't feel it. So we ventured off post, and went for a little while to the baptist church right outside the gate. We had good friends that went there and it was not bad. But when the Beaver started going to the Christian school, he asked that we attend the baptist church that is just adjacent to the school. There is no requirement that he attend, but we thought how often does a teen ask to go to church? So we started attending about a year ago, and have been ever since.

It's not a bad little service. But I miss the liturgy. And the more traditional music. The reason we continue to go is that the ministry is so genuine. There is a transparency to their religion in that they really do minister in countless ways, both inside and outside the church. I love them for that.

But, (you knew this was coming!) there is something about a baptist service that just doesn't feel . . . I can't get the right word here, worshipful? Remember in the movie Pollyanna, when the townspeople would dread Sundays and get heartburn? It was the preacher's Sunday sermon, full of brooding hellfire and damnation! To quote Karl Malden:

"Strike hard the excessiveness of God's wrath (on Sunday) and hope they can carry it with them a few days into the week."

I'm like Pollyanna in wanting to hear the glad verses, because being a Christian is the best thing in the world to be, it should be joyful! And that's what's been bugging me. Our sermon's are preached as if everyone is a lost dying sinner. But this is a very small congregation and everyone knows and/or is related to everyone else and you just know that they are all professed Christians. So why is every Sunday a Groundhog Day Sermon?! And every Sunday we end with an altar call. Are they surprised when no one comes forward? You've already got 'em!

And there's the difference. Sunday morning should be about worship, mainly. (You can reel them in at other times, and we should be about this business daily.) That is what I miss so about an Episcopal service. The orderliness, the Liturgy of the Word with its Old Testament, then the Psalms reading followed by the gospel reading, the collect, the Nicene Creed. Everything is done in its proper order with the help of fidgety altar boys and grumpy old deacons. Maybe I'm just partial because that's the church that welcomed us into the body of Christ.

And now I'm back to it . . . the body of Christ. This little church is part of it and it's where I have to be if only for a season.