It’s all Shelley’s fault.
We had sworn up and down after all of the craziness, the moving, the travel, concluded by barely dodging a stint in a Los Angeles homeless shelter, we were done with church leadership.
I had gone back to work immediately after the return from L.A., and my son was born shortly thereafter. We bring our infant home to my sister’s basement, which was actually already set up as a fairly decent apartment. It is wonderful to be back, reconnecting with family in my hometown. Thank God for my sister and her husband’s generosity.
We half-heartedly visit a few churches in my hometown, but nothing looks like anyplace we want to go.
Finding a good church is a challenge. Outside of the very obvious fact that we are quite burned out on the whole idea, the middle-of-the-road, less wacko denominations tend to have more stodgy music, and are just too formal for us, while the Pentecostal/Charismatic churches can have the most incredible worship teams, but then we’re back in Crazytown.
We visit a sparsely attended Baptist church in which they clearly hadn’t seen any new faces in years, because the minute we enter the door, they look surprised and overjoyed, and kinda mob us. I feel like a pizza in a piranha tank. They are clearly desperate for new people. I see red flags. The older women all wear buns, the younger all have absurdly long hair, and all of the females are in long skirts, no makeup.
Nope.
We visit another in which the music is pretty great, but they are babbling away in tongues and waving around giant flags during the music. Some members are lying on the ground, having been “slain in the Spirit”. Or they got clocked in the head by the flags. Entertaining to be sure, but… Nope.
We visit one which is really popular, but it reminds me of MacArthur’s church, with the saccharine-sweet pious looking down their holy noses. Nope.
We visit several that are just too stodgy. Or too crazy. Maybe we’re just done with church altogether.
And then Shelley.
Shelley, Shelley, Shelley.
Shelley had been on the worship team at the church in Tiny Town with us, and was now on a team at a different church in Tiny Town. She just loooooooves this new church and by golly, she sure does want us to visit.
“You just HAVE to visit my church. Just try it once. It’s just so down to earth, the pastor is awesome, the people are great, there’s even programs for the kids.”
This woman is doing the Coffee’s for Closers speech about this joint.
We reluctantly agree to visit, pretty much so Shelley will shut up. This place is back in Tiny Town, which makes me want to ball up in fetal position and shake. We had sworn off that one-horse, ten-tavern, Kmart-is-the-only-store-to-shop-at place when we left. We were DONE, nothing could possibly make us go back. But we have exhausted every church possibility in my hometown. I guess we didn’t visit the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons or Scientologists, but y’know, all the halfway normal ones without Tom Cruise or Gwyneth Paltrow as their poster child.
We finally decide to go, and on a warm summer’s day drive the half hour to Tiny Town, and pull in, tires crackling in the gravel lot of a building outdated enough to look like the Brady Bunch’s bilevel just has to be next door. We enter and sit down in scratchy rust-orange chairs.
The people are friendly.
So what.
Churches always make a big deal about how friendly they are, but that’s overrated, it says nothing about what’s actually going on. At this point, I know there can be all sorts of bullshit under the hood in a church, all covered up by broad smiling faces.
The worship is pretty average. Shelley is an amazing singer, which definitely helps. I might be kinda overly picky about music. And by might, I mean most definitely am.
The pastor… is AWESOME!
I’m still trying to come up with the right adjective for his name. What do you picture in your mind when I write the word Pastor?
He’s not that. Whatever you pictured, nope.
Pastor Real (there it is!) is a sassy, snarky East Coast Italian who calls things as they are and pulls no punches. His family has ties to the mob and he was a professional chef in Cape Cod. I love him immediately. My own family history lies in a Polish/Italian neighborhood in Chicago, lots of us Polish married Italians. He hates it when people say Eye-talian. So do I, it’s not Eye-taly. Just stop. And don’t even get me started on my love for Italian food, honestly that’s another book I could write. He’s blunt and authentic, drinks cabernet out of a jelly glass, and gets under the skin of the traditional churchy people I’ve never been able to tolerate. We talk to him after the message, and decide we are in. Boom it happens again, we are involved in church.
Things are about to get much, much better.
Then much, much worse.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 