My hometown church
Blogger was totally crashing on me yesterday, so if I manage to post this, I will be VERY happy. Actually, I'm already very happy that I managed to post the post below! Thank God for small miracles!
Chinese New Year being a time for families to get together, on Saturday we travelled the one-and-a-half hours to my mom's hometown for the family reunion on her side. We got back past midnight and Sunday service in my hometown church starts at 8:30am which I feel is an ungodly hour!
I confess: I skipped church. Mom tried to wake me up, but I can be extremely un-wake-uppable. I never even used to hear my alarm clock ring - it would ring and ring and the neighbour in the house behind ours would be jolted wide awake, yet I'd sleep through the whole thing. Mom used to worry how I'd make it for classes when I went to college, but I had wonderful roommates who always shook me awake... then somehow I got used to hearing the alarm clock - and actually WAKING UP to it!
But the real problem wasn't the earliness of the service. It was... oh, I don't know what it was, really.
You see, going back to the church I grew up in, there is a sense of, "Look at me! I'm all grown up now, and I've made something of myself!" I don't even know why I feel this way. I walk into church and I feel eyes following me. (Maybe I have a persecution complex? Or just an overblown ego? hahahaa) People come up to me after the service and say, "You're back!" and ask me what I'm doing now, how do I like my job, etc., etc.
And I'm not really going to church to meet with God. In fact, it's more like I'm going to church because I'm expected to. So I trot in with my parents, sit with them, and generally "do church" it is, more often than not, a performance.
I could will it not to be a performance, but at 8:30am I am too lazy and sleepy to try; the last few times I went home, my heart wasn't in the worship songs I was singing and I yawned through the sermon.
I underestimate my hometown church, an un-charismatic Methodist church that seems stiff and passionless and unresponsive to the Holy Spirit. People go to church every Sunday without fail and sit on various committees, but do they really love Jesus? I have no idea. It feels like everybody's going through the motions; I see no joy, no life in the church.
Yet from the things Mom tells me, God is starting to move; a new pastor was transferred in last year, and he's more open to the things of the Spirit, more radical (in a uniquely Methodist way) than previous pastors have been. (For the record, my hometown church isn't terribly "traditional" we hardly adhere strictly to the liturgy! Hymns have (sadly) mostly been relegated to the "Hymn of Preparation" and "Hymn of Commitment" slots just before and after the sermon. But whilst not being "traditional", we aren't too "modern", either.)
Yes, I'm guilty of judging and I need to repent. For some reason, somewhere along the line I've bought into the assumption that I cannot, will not meet with God in my hometown church. I won't find Him there. I won't hear from Him there. Because I somehow feel that His voice is not allowed there.
So I don't really bother to listen for His voice there, which is why I didn't want to go to church on Sunday morning. I didn't want to go through a performance.
But I shouldn't LET it degenerate into a performance!!!