Sunday, May 26, 2002 @ 02:05 p.m.

Thoughts on the first time at church

I know I have said in the past that I was going to start going to church, but I hadn't... I just started today.

This was a solo effort today (for reasons of employment for my wife), but will indeed be a joint activity.

Upon first entering the building, I was quite nervous. I just stood in the foyer motionless and was almost going to walk back out the door. Well, I didn't.

It seems that the congregation at Trinity United Methodist down on Lark Street is mainly older people (no one in my or my wife's age range) but they all seem to be very friendly. I think they could all tell that I was new there as I stood off in the corner with my cup of coffee before the service started. They all came up and introduced themselves very quickly (I think the longest conversation I had with them was around 2 minutes).

After i kind of got the gist of everyone, it all went pretty well. Now for my thoughts on the service itself.

When was the last time I went to church before this? Who knows? Maybe about 2 or more years ago, so I had no idea what to expect. I had never been to a methodist service before so that further put me in the dark...

It's all pretty straightforward though. This service included Hymns, a couple bible verses, and some other speakers.

As for the main ideas of the service, this is what i am trying to get at for this posting. There was the main idea of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit throughout the whole thing. The Pastor mentioned this in the way of the "Three Ways of Viewing God." BINGO!!! There's the way I wanted to hear it!!! Not the whole thing about Jesus and God being the same person or anything like that 9it was later that things were said about God the Father and Jesus, the son, being the Lord... there is the difference.)

The other idea expressed was absolutely wonderful... It was during the Stewardship (I will not use names in this posting as of yet.) The speaker talked about the idea in the Ten Commandments about "Love Thy Neighbor as you love yourself." He said that this idea is all over... not just the bible. If we all followed this idea, there would be no 9-11 tragedy, there would be no conflicts in Israel, there would be no young people being suicide bombers, there would be no shootings.

That point made me decide to stay. The clincher, however, was the closing hymn: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic!" You have no idea how that piece makes me feel.

So... beautiful building, nice old people, relevant service, coffee, cake, my favorite hymn in the world... All that made it totally worth getting out of the house at 9:30 on a Sunday morning!!

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Sunday, May 26, 2002 @ 01:48 p.m.

A New Attempt

The old page format has vanished before your very eyes... It's time I took this thing in a new direction. It's kind of like preparing for a vacation and having no idea where the hell you are going... But we'll see how this works out.

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