Breaking the mold.

So its been far too long, but after the events of tonight, I felt compelled to share with my friend the keyboard. So in accordance with the title of this page, Thoughts, Philosophies, and Faith, I thought this would be a good topic to share.

Since I've moved back home ive been checking out a couple churches mostly to meet some new people, hopefully with the same mindset as me but also to find a place that challenges the attendees. let me tell you, its been fairly disappointing. Ive been checking out a vineyard church for the last couple of weeks mainly because ive been going to a vineyard church off and on for the last 3 years. Anyways so the first day i show up at church i get a flier handed to me about a, for lack of a better term, focus group. well a focus group session with some worship thrown in there. anyways that was two weeks ago and the 'focus group" event was aimed at reaching 'our generation' and asking why there is a huge gap in any given church between highschool and forty year olds. so the event was tonight and i figured id go down there and check it out. so i threw on a sweatshirt, hopped on my bike and rode down there. of course i thought nothing of it at the time but when i got there i took off my sweatshirt, started talkin with some of the folk and you know carrying on and whatnot. But i had noticed one thing. it seemed like the people i talked to were very polite, you know the average what school do you go to talk. whats your major all that BS but some reason they were apprehensive. I thought nothing of it, mainly because a lot of the people who were there knew each other and i was the new kid. so later on we get into groups and start talking about how we can change the church to become more relevant to people our age, and what we thought the church should look like to our generation because something clearly wasnt working.

to be honest im not quite sure why i said this but at one point i spoke up amongst my table and said why dont we go out to the community instead of trying to get people to come to the church. why cant we bring the church to them is basically what i said. and some people agreed, but i also hinted on the stupidity of focus groups and planning meetings when all our efforts should be put towards making relationships and getting to know people before we blindly try to sell why we should get them into our churches. i just thought, and let them know this, that all i see out there amongst the churches ive been to is to get a group of people together to talk about why people our age arent coming to church. now it could be just me but that seems down right stupid to me.

so by the end of the night, i had come off as, well, i dont know but im pretty sure some didnt like what i had said. Also i had realized that i had been proudly wearing my duffy's tavern beer shirt quite proudly. After the discussion time we closed and the speaker began to thank those people who had planned the focus group and the event that night. It turns out three of them were sitting at my table. the way i see it, you've got to make some waves to see any change. it was easy for me to say those things because i didnt know anyone there. i dont know if i changed anyone's mind tonight, but i do know two things. one, i insulted some people, some with my shirt and some with my comments, and two, it provided a good chuckle all the way home on my bike ride back. now the question is do i go back to that church? i think i should, if anything just for the humor of it.

i promise to post on starbucks nation next time, really i do.....