church rant (postscript)
Interestingly, the Sunday after I wrote the Liberal Churches Rant (below), we happened to run into Binkley's pastor at lunch after church. Feeling a little guilty about being a hateful blog-ranter, I got nervous when he came over to our table to chat, but as always, he was warm, welcoming, and friendly. Try not to be too critical, Peter! We mentioned our plans to move to Greensboro, among other things; after a while, he left and went to his table, and I calmed down a little.When we left, though, we stopped by his table to chat some more. It was then that he asked us to be worship leaders. One of the Binkley mantras is "every member a minister," and we're not even members, but we still got invited to lead a responsive reading, read scripture, and do prayers. So this past Sunday, Amanda and I were Binkley worship leaders for the first and last time.
After the service, we went to the Fellowship Hall to shake hands with everyone, as we had been asked to do. Coincidentally, it was the pastor's 10-year anniversary celebration, so the receiving line went a little slower than usual. OK, a lot slower - we stood there for 45 minutes shaking hands, making nervous small talk, and staring blankly at people as they waited to speak to other, more interesting/important people down the line. (This was also a scary thing for us because we usually skip the receiving line after worship.)
On the whole, people were very nice and welcoming, and many of them asked us our names and if we had just joined the church. It got to be kind of fun to tell them that no, we'd been there for two years and were about to leave, and wasn't it a shame that they hadn't gotten to know us yet.* One woman asked if we were in high school. Another was completely sure that we had a young child. The craziest thing was that I met an alumnus of my planning program -- he's a big shot transportation planner for Arlington, but he was down in Chapel Hill visiting. So I did get some networking out of the event.
We're looking forward to moving to Greensboro, but it will be sad to leave Carrboro. If you love lifting boxes, come help us move!
*I don't think we ever actually said that last bit.
Labels: church
posted by Peter @ 22:41
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