White Church, Black Church & my 15th Birthday

Being back in Katy, Texas is so weird. The neighborhood has changed. There are more people of diverse, ethnic backgrounds. But it's still the same. The white, rich, Republicans dominate.

I went to Kingsland Baptist Church this morning, where I've been going for the past three weeks. This is the church I started going to back when I was 15 years. Having grown up, unchurched, I started believing in and following Jesus after a summer camp experience where I concluded that there is no such thing as coincidence. A couple days later, while getting the mail, my neighbor, a woman I had known my whole life, asked me if I was saved.

"What is that?"

I knew it was something religious. And usually I would have said "No, not interested." But I was interested. So I went into her house and she told me how she was saved. And after a long talk, she gave me a small book that was a study of the gospel of John.

I knew there was a Bible in that room in my house where my dad kept his stuff. (My parents had divorced long before.) I found it and started reading John, and I got to . . .

"And to all who believed him, to all who called on his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children not born of natural descent, nor of a husband's will, nor of human decision, but born of God." (This is how I remember it. I didn't even look it up. . . I promise.)

And I felt and I saw a light. And I just knew. This was it. This is what I had been looking for my entire life. I knew this was God. And God's been talking to me and taking care of me ever since.

So I told that crazy girl who I had become friends with the year before, "Yes, I'll go with you to your youth group at church."

Then on September 11, 1991, I stayed after youth group with the youth minister and said the prayer confessing my sins and professing belief that Jesus is God and has paved the way for my sins and that I would commit to following Jesus.

I'm coming up on my 15th birthday. You know what happened on my 10th birthday.

So this morning, I went to Kingsland. And the pastor talked about "getting on the dance floor" with your partner who is your spouse and how God created us to have these stable families where the moms stay home and greet their children when they come home everyday.

And at some point, the all-male deacons collect the offering.

And the worship is very ordered. Stand up, sit down. Maybe a couple people lift their arms during a particularly upbeat song.

And then I went to the Singles class. Yes, I've come to accept that certain level of humiliation that comes with being a single 30-year old in suburbia. (I just have 2 high school friends who are still single. The other ones have all bitten the dust. . . . Is that a dumb joke? I don't even know what the phrase is supposed to mean.)

So then church got out, and I went across the street to Faith Manger Church, next to the Seven Days Food Store, across from my high school. And a black woman hugs me when I come in. And the drums are beating loud. It's a small place-- two rooms of a strip mall. There were about 25 people there. And guess what?? I wasn't the only white person. There were two other white women, and white kids. And the man at the front was white.

But this was black church.

Loud drums, praying out loud, screaming out loud, praying in tongues, people walking around, women embracing/smothering other women as they pray for each other, and one was the full-on show, having been taken over by the Holy Spirit.

I'm used to black church. I started going when I moved to Boston when I was 18. But the first time I saw a woman with her head down and spinning around and wailing, it kind of freaked me out.
And I felt so comfortable. I haven't been able to worship my style, since I was in Boston a month ago. And in black church, it's free. You talk aloud, you lift up your hands, you can walk around, you can dance around, you can run around the church, you can talk to your neighbor, and you can start crying, or you can sit in your chair and just meditate (if you can handle all the noise.)

It's free. That's how I worship. Not that every black church is like this. It's not this loud or as dramatic at my church home in Cambridge. When I say "white church" and "black church" I'm describing different styles. But of course every congregation is different. My church in Lebanon was much more like black church than white church.

Kingsland just sent a team to Mongolia for a week-long short-term missions trip.

I wonder if any of those people have been next door.

And then came my favorite part--the sermon. This is always a crap shoot. Sometimes the pastor is good, and sometimes the pastor really isn't so good. This guy was talking about stuff that had nothing to do with the passage from Scripture. It was like he'd just go off and say stuff and then say let's look back at the passage. But what was he looking at?

I tend to get bored and lose focus in situations like this. Generally, I can't stay awake through sermons or movies. So I just started reading the passage myself, and how weird is this . . . . it said . . .

"The violence you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you,
and your destruction of animals will terrify you.
For you have shed man's blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them."
--Habakkuk 2: 17

You think I just looked that up in a concordance or something. I didn't. And I never look at Habakkuk. God is so weird like that. I haven't been reading much of my Bible at all, not in these last two years, at least. Since I've been in Katy, I've tried resurrecting my quiet time.

But this passage is just uncanny.

You know Habakkuk is chiding Israel. (Actually it's Judah--the southern kingdom that included Jerusalem when Israel divided after Solomon's reign.) That's what all those Old Testament prophets do.