I went to church.

This is probably the last topic that most of you who know me would expect to see.

I’ve had a fairly agnostic view of the world over the past half-decade, finding myself unimpressed with religion since my father died. Mother had been trying to get me to go to church with her for years, but I told her that I wasn’t going to a brainwashing session, which is what I felt her church was, basically.

I didn’t trust her pastor then.

When he left, and they got another one — the Rev. Dr. Henry Lyons (blah blah blah), I REALLY refused to go then. I think that snake oil comes to mind when dealing with him.

When mom died, we were stuck with him presiding over the funeral.

He turned a Saturday funeral into a ‘worship’ service (Hah!), and tried to get us to join his church. He made a couple of low volume remarks to his own members that basically pressed the red button. By that point, all I wanted to do was put my mother in the ground, so we could get away from him.

I really didn’t want to go to church, but mother had been asking me to go.
I can’t tell mom “No” forever, can I?

So, Over the past couple of months, I’ve had a number of customers at work, attempting to show me the power of Christ through their words and actions. A couple of them have asked me to come to their church, and I said that if I ever got a Sunday off, I would.

Well, I had yesterday off. I had a choice of Without Walls International Church, or Manhattan Avenue Church of Christ. I opted for the latter, since there was a football game scheduled for yesterday, and Without Walls isn’t even a mile away from the stadium.

I was quite surprised.

Everyone was so friendly and welcoming at Manhattan Avenue CoC, which was quite disarming for me. I sat in the back, as far back as their setup would allow, not knowing what to expect. I was used to the Missionary Baptist style of church, with lots of loud music, louder preachers, and services that not only never started on time, but would go on for a few hours.

We started at 10:30, give or take a few (quite forgiveable) minutes.
We finished at about 8 minutes to noon.
My eardrums did not bleed. In fact, I was sorta straining to hear some of what was said.

I remarked to the minister after church, “Y’know, if this were my old church, we’d have just been getting to the sermon right about … now.”

I spent some time talking with Minister Grayson (feel free to correct me, because I KNOW you’re reading this :D), and we ended up heading off to lunch. We talked a fair bit more, and I feel like I may go back. Not this coming Sunday, but hopefully the next one: I did make a promise to the other guy from Without Walls, and I try to be as good to my words as I want others to be, regarding me.