church hunt

This morning as I was getting ready to check out yet another church put on John Coltrane and Duke Ellington’s “Big Nick” and drank my coffee. Coltrane always puts me into a contemplative mood. As I sat with my coffee I thought about all the bad church experiences I have had. And I have had a LOT, let me tell you. Most of them actually being here.
I was recently on the phone with my sister dicussing the idea of church and she gave me these sage words. If you aren’t out in an hour, they are doing something wrong. If they are yelling Hallelujah and Praise You Jesus while singing, they are too in touch with the ‘Holy Spirit’ (AKA probably drank too much of the communion wine before church). If the pasto’s wife is wearing a dress with shoulder pads, they take themselves too seriously. If there are more people on stage singing and doing other musical related things, they have no sense of what good music really is. As I thought this morning about my church experiences here in Delhi, and compared them to the things I had talked about with my sister, I realized the one thing that I want, I won’t ever have again. I FREAKING MISS ARTISAN. It was, and always will be the best church that I have ever gone to. There was this harmonious balance of reality and religion all in one. There was no bull shit. The pastos give it to you like it really is. And the fact that there are four pastors makes such sense. If you split the perfect pastor into four sections, we will call these A, B, C and D for lack of proper terms, then parts a-d would be the four areas a pastor should be “fluent in” (also for lack of a better term). It’s nearly, if not completely impossible to find one person who excells in all four areas, and Artisan was smart enough to recognize that, so instead of searching for the perfect pastor, four men came together, each excelling in one of the four areas, and combined they made a great team, because they each possessed a skill that they other’s were not fluent in.
So having been to such a well rounded church, one that fit my style, one that worked perfectly for me, it is hard to find another. Some people say you only get one great love of your life. What if you only get one great church?
The first church I went to had seven people on stage doing, what I can only call, sound. I refuse to refer to what they tried to do as music. One drummer, on guitar player (with a mic also), one piano player, and four people making noises into microphones. One woman was singing in a completely different key as the rest of the people on stage, The guitar player did a lot of “praising you jesus” into the mic, instead of singing. Needless to say it was atrocious! So I left. I only stayed for about ten minutes, but once I got to my car I realized that I forgot my sunglasses, there was no way in hell that I was going back for them though. I would rather spend the $10 to buy another pair! I went to another church I had on my list, luckily it was right down the road and didn’t start until 10:30, so I had some time.
The second I walked in I was already regretting it, but I decided to give it a chance. The first problem occurred when I walked in the door, I couldn’t find the sanctuary, and it was dead silent, so there was no way I could listen for people. When I finally found the sanctuary I crept in the back and everyone was just sitting inside in silence. Creepy. Finally someone came up to the front and prayed and went back to his seat, a little confused I decided to give them five more minutes! So someone starts singing and I hear a guitar pick up. When I say someone started singing, it was weird. Someone stood up, then everyone else stood up, in the congregation that is, and then this one random person starts singing a song. The girl working the overhead projector rummages through a box of overheads looking for the song that the random person started singing, and she finds it. Meanwhile in the back of the room, yes the back corner, the band starts following the song. And it proceeded like this for an HOUR. A whole hour of someone starting a song and everyone else following. After the LONGEST hour of my life someone finally came up to teach, for fifteen minutes. After he was done I bolted.