My "church hopping" mentor sent this summary of our experience last night. I thought it was better than any summary I could have written.
I sent Tom an e-mail asking if he wanted to go to this new church in Nashua 7:00pm bible study tonight. The first interesting part (yes, there are a few) of the night started as we got there. The address for the church was an Indian restaurant. A friend of mine who attends the church came by and showed us the door and said the address was the same for both units.
The songs to start off the night were ones that have the chorus sung about a dozen times again and again and again and again (you get the picture). The lead singer had a fabulous voice though and did some long winded praising when the song was done.
Tom noticed there were boxes of tissues all over the place. Funny, in the Catholic Church we have hand sanitizer all over the place and no tissues? More on this later.
Next Pastor came on and started preaching up a storm. We were studying out of the 5th chapter of John. He had us bouncing all over the bible for references. He made sure on numerous occasions that we under stood Jesus didn't come to make a religion, only relationships? One statement he made I wanted to have him explain after was "Jesus to be spiritually alive, he first had to spiritually dead". Not sure what that was about.
After the night was over, a woman came forward to talk to pastor about salvation and pastor handed her a bible. As she was leaving she said, "I didn't think I should have come being this intoxicated, but I came anyway". This with make up running down her face because of the tears. Ah, now I know why the tissues and not the hand sanitizer.
Afterwards we talked with pastor for about 20 minutes. We explained we were in a the formation to become deacons with the Catholic Church. He started in that all believers need to be born again to get to heaven. Before we could discuss this another fellow from the church came over to greet us. We explained the same thing to him. He asked pastor what was his church's take on saints. Pastor said to ask us what our take was on saints. I thought that was a weak cop-out answer. I was wondering, if he didn't know we were studying at St. A's for our formation would he have said the typical non-Catholic answer. Well, as I was thinking this, the other guy says, "well, Catholics worship saints". Ok, now hold the bus there junior, that's supposed to be pastor's response. I explained that was a misconception by a lot of non-Catholics and that would be idolatry and forbidden by the church because we only worship God. Then the other guy says, "well I'm Catholic." Oh my, this roller coaster we got on tonight is going to have to end pretty soon.
Well, I saved the best part for last. At the end of the service tonight pastor was wrapping up and just stopped and said, "God is telling me there is someone in this room with back pain". I'm looking around the place and seeing all the folks in their 40's and older and thinking, there's a good change half the room's got back pain tonight. Why didn't he just pick a topic like needing reading glasses, gravity has taken over parts of your body or hair loss? He put the first person who came forward in a chair and said one of their legs was an inch shorter than the other and commanding a healing from Jesus and said the persons legs are now even. The person got up and said the back pain is gone. Two more came and he did the same thing to them.
Tom told me on the way home tonight that I was lucky that this was the fourth time he's gone out and not the first or he may not go back. This was something right out of a Jimmy Swaggart televangelist program. Tonight will go down as one of the more memorable Wednesday night session and probably not one to be repeated. Well I'm off to worship some statues and saints before I tuck myself in for a restful night sleep.
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