Another church bites the dust.

Our church has closed its doors as of Sunday. Well, we didn't have any doors of our own, which was okay with me, but that was the date of our last service. We are merging with another church, which is more like saying that some of the members will be going together to another church.

The closing was inevitable. The church was in a part of town that is now quite international, both legal and illegal, if you catch my drift. Contrast that with our (mostly) whiteness, which wouldn't be a draw for them. The biggest church in the area had dwindled down to around a hundred members, closed its school, and sold its large church building to a spanish-speaking Catholic congregation. The remnant of those left from that church moved south to try to regroup.

My impression is that the church that is absorbing our church, so to speak, was essentially looking for another pastor and an improved worship band (I'm biased, but our is considerably better than theirs, and hey, I was in the music biz for more than a few years, so that's my "professional" - ha - opinion).

My analogy for this transition is that of an arranged marriage. The two groups of elders decided this would be good, but they didn't even bother coming over to spend an entire service with us...not once. A number of people at our church are enthusiastic, and I will not rain on their parade. They talk about us all being in the body of Christ. My answer is, in a group of ten Christian guys, they would not all be equally good mates for me.

They're a lot more conservative than us. The more conservative members of our church will welcome that, and I'm glad they will find a home. They also have a number of buildings, which has been important to a number of our members. I think buildings are vastly overrated, but I would agree that this church uses theirs more than most.

There's a lot of stress in our lives and this doesn't reduce it, but we will still have the chance to see our friends, at least for a while. We think of them as being our family. Some friends won't join us at this church, and that seems like the right decision for them.

My experience with churches that say they want to reach out and have more members is that they seem to generally want just more people like themselves.

I don't want to be assimilated into this way of thinking and acting, but I also don't want to fight the battles with even gently convincing others that we do not have to all be the same.

I still want people to be comfortable with wearing shorts and sandals to church, to have meaningful community, to stretch boundaries of worship and service, and maybe to have some church people reach out to us which hasn't happened a lot even at our present church.

Yes, I will keep my eyes open to look for positive signs, because I know that God can bring them. But I'm looking for other options. I can't wait for spiritual sustenance, and can't fight the battles of being different and not wanting to be merely turned into a conformist to their culture.

So I'll have the interesting journey of looking for some other spiritual sustenance. I've been through this before, when a church we attended in another state had a significant problem, and we decided we needed to stay and help minister to people, but we attended another church Sunday evenings to get some spiritual food.

This isn't the first church closing we've dealt with. But the last one involved questionable activities on the part of the pastor, so it is nice that we aren't dealing with that this time.

God has something planned! Will be interesting to see what it is.

If you are a praying person

Please pray for us. We are, indeed, grateful. God will prevail! He surely does take His sweet time, however...life's dragging on the bottom right now with wave after wave of bad news.

We continue to practice "On The Other Hands". Even told kiddo about them, and now they remind me of them with regularity. If a sixteen year old tells you they like your idea, as a 40-something you come close to fainting.

At any rate, things are really rough for the nashbabe and nashdude, but God has always taken care of us before, so why would He stop now? That's what I keep trying to tell myself. Sometimes, truly, it does seem like an attempt at brainwashing, but a renewed (i.e., "washed") brain ain't all bad if it's good and true stuff, eh? Yeah, yeah, I know. My feelings are all stressed, pained, frustration, fear, etc. But feelings aren't necessarily the truth. There I go telling myself that again.

I believe, help my unbelief. If God wanted me at the end of my schemes, my plans, my ideas, my attempts to control, BINGO! TARGET ACHIEVED!!!!

Thanks, I really appreciate you!!!

Kitty Ninjas

I blatantly stole this from my friend Kruse Kronicle. But seriously folks, he actually has a very erudite, thoughtful blog. This photo in no way represents his commentary. You can experience it for yourself here. Not bad, not bad at all.

Why is he so brilliant? I have a sneaking suspicion that the Scandinavian heritage he possesses has a little to do with it. Although if he has actually consumed lutefisk, I retract my statement. ;-P

Plane Crash

That is a peculiar title, I'm sure, but two weeks ago we were witnesses to a plane crash that almost led to our buying the farm, I suspect. Not that the farm isn't bought already, but I digress.

We went to Long Hunter State Park to get out of the house a bit. As we drove to the park entrance, I saw an older-looking plane flying extremely low to the ground. The airport isn't far from that location. As we drove a bit further into the park, we saw the plane coming right at us as we drove next to the only clearing in miles, that the pilot had chosen for his emergency landing.

Neither the tail nor the landing gear had been spared, so the plane was essentially out of control as it sped up the incline of the clearing, right at us. It all happened so fast. Right before it would have hit us, it veered to its left and stopped. The pilot, thankfully, was unhurt. Two weeks later, the plane was still at the crashlanding site where everything occured.

Video report here. Despite what the video said, we did see the pilot. The guy on film said "I'm stayin' here 'til the news cameras get here." Obviously, we didn't. Talk about getting shaken up.