The Edge Of Church

Join a church. Done!

Well, I suppose I exaggerate. There seem to be two plans of attack here. Either try out lots of churches every Sunday to find one that I like. Or just stick with the first one in order to lay down some roots and make some friends.

Either way, church #1 (which was recommended to me by a lady I met on a Christian writing weekend in Northampton about a month ago) seemed quite creative.

As I was a newcomer, a guy called Anthony welcomed me with a free lollipop. I like that childlike generosity in a modern church.

I also saw that they had a mean-looking band, which made me cringe in despair at modern churches.

Someone stood-up at one point and presented a pop-video that they'd just made. He was quite a friendly chap, although the video had lots of fake film-dirt on it, which rarely makes sense to me in any context.

The sermon was brilliant, what I saw of it. The pastor was presenting clips from a movie called The Castle, which I made a mental note of to find and watch in its entirety later. I missed the second half of the sermon because, ironically, I was going to the cinema again...

As I headed away to the Auckland Film Festival though, there was one thing that really warmed my heart about this place. In amongst the church's stated goals was the line "To build whanau."

I felt really comforted to have found a church where they'd recognised that.