The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple

I am not the Lord whom ye seek, and this blog is not a temple, but I’m back, and that strain from The Messiah is in my head.  The fact is that I like writing and, even though I’m a Ph.D. student, I don’t get to do enough of it.  At least not enough that is less than 20 pages long.  So without any further ado, let’s talk about church.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to an evening service at a Methodist congregation on the north side of Chicago.  Worth checking out if you live in Chicago or happen to be passing through on a Sunday night.  It’s kind of church à la O Brother, Where art Thou.  Acoustic guitar is the only accompaniment and the hymns are old-timey American frontier type songs.  Young crowd at this service, very casual, a little too individualistic sometimes (“let this service be whatever you need it to be”), and a few liturgical idiosyncrasies that drive me up the wall (“this is my blood of the new relationship,” bearing in mind that the name of this church is Holy Covenant UMC!  I’ll have to ask the pastor about that one next time I’m there).  In fact, I’ve been telling people that this service offends me on both catholic and evangelical grounds.  And I love it.

My point to all this?  Inasmuch as I have one, it’s that for the past several years, I have been a chronic church hopper, going mostly to Lutheran and Episcopal churches in my neighborhood.  I’m also a liturgical geek (some might say a liturgical asshole), and I’m always looking for just the right sort of service in a socially liberal congregation that preserves catholic (i.e. Anglican) form with evangelical (i.e. Wesleyan) power.  All too often, I find bad form and no power.  But there does come a point when one really must simply pick a church, forgive it for not being the church you’ve been looking for, and go to it.  I don’t feel bad for church hopping in college and my early 20s.  In fact, I think it was a very valuable experience, and I kind of wish I’d been even more eclectic in my choices, especially since moving to Chicago.  I’d encourage most 20-somethings to do it a bit, especially those preparing for ordained ministry.  But as of last week, I’m now decidedly in my late 20s.  And when I’m not called away on supply preaching gigs or whathaveyou (or a more regular gig that may be in the works), I think this will be my congregation for awhile.

Now about those words of institution…