My home church is awesome

Every time I come home to my parent's house in PA, and I go to church, I am surprised at how emerging the church really is (and they don't even know it). Tonight was our Christmas Eve service. If I was at Gateway, it would probably have been much more professional and done-up (not that there's anything wrong with that). But here, at Cornerstone Community Church in Sellersville, PA, we kicked off the service with a ska song that was about the birth of Jesus Christ. It was great! Now, I'm not a terribly big ska fan. A lot of my friends said they went through a "ska phase" and now they're over it, but the fact of the matter is, it was played over the sound system at the beginning of a Christmas Eve service. Hooray for abnormality! (The service also closed with a country song...)

Anyways, I just appreciate the way that this church is unafraid to be different and to love whoever walks through the doors of this Methodist camp's cafeteria that we meet in. I appreciate the fact that I can get up on Sunday morning or whenever and suck at whatever I'm singing, and still get positive feedback from people because they heard the words, or they just appreciate someone having the guts to get up front and do that. Now, I don't ever intend to get up in front of people and totally suck at my songs, but it happens sometimes. Tonight we had crazy feedback in the monitors, and the service was a bit more unorganized than I am comfortable with, but in that environment, it didn't matter. People were there to be with other people and Jesus, and nothing was going to get in the way of that.

I think that for all my critical eyeing of the way the church does things today, I might actually be becoming less judgmental. My goal is to become less concerned about what goes on, and more concerned about why it goes on. I think that's why some churches/church services rile me up so much, because I think that their motives are wrong, or misguided. And some things about churches/church services that rile other people up don't really bother me, because I think the heart behind it or the reason it's being done is good.

Well, I'm going to bed. Tonight was a night full of thinking, and tomorrow is the celebration of Jesus' birthday, so I should get some rest for that. I kind of wish I could get away for a while with Jesus, but I'm not sure how that would happen...

Merry Christmas