I don’t identify with a specific Christian denomination anymore, but I had extensive experience with three disparate church services in my childhood. Here are a few thoughts I remember having.
Episcopalian service (ages 4-10)
- Neat! A parade! And Daddy is singing in it!
- What does “after Epiphany” mean?
- But I want to sit here! It’s just my size!
- How do you know when to stand, kneel, or sit? I’ll just do what Mom does. I hope she knows.
- Why am I in trouble for drawing musical notes on the empty staves in the back of the hymnal? Isn’t that what they’re there for?
- Mom, you got any more LifeSavers?
- When Reverend Jones says “The Lord be with you,” I can never remember when to say “and also with you” and when to say “and with thy spirit.” Aren’t they kind of the same anyway?
- What’s with the weird, slow movements when you’re drinking from the cup and eating your wafer?
Mass (at Catholic school, ages 9-12)
- I don’t know very many of these songs.
- Why are we saying this ten times? God heard us the first time. God even knew we were going to say it before we said it that time.
- This song “Abba Father” sounds just like the theme from Chariots of Fire.
- Father Donnelly can’t sing a lick. I wonder if it’s okay if he speaks that part of the Mass?
- Why do some people take the wafer from him, and others make him put it on their tongues? I bet he’s really good at performing a half-inch drop of the wafer.
- Why do some do the sign of the cross after they eat it, and some don’t?
- Sheri always looks so pretty, but she’s in the EIGHTH grade, and plus I’ll always be the kid who threw up in her mom’s car.
- Is it okay if your ashes don’t look particularly like a cross?
Southern Baptist service (ages 12-15)
- I don’t know very many of these songs.
- These are the “Amen”ingist people I’ve ever been around.
- I don’t know very many people here. I hope some people stand up when I’m in the baptistry with Brother Jim and he calls for “friend or family of Bo” to stand up. Good, everybody did.
- Man, Brother Jim gets excited. I don’t know why they even mike him.
- I like that Brother Jim gives us the Hebrew and Greek words and definitions in the verses he discusses.
- Man, Brother Alex can sing. I can’t believe that much voice fits in that small guy.
- I’d like to be sitting next to Jeanna.
- Stan’s got the bass too high.
- I know that grown-ups shouldn’t drink too much, but I don’t know that a beer is a “can of garbage.”
- On the other hand, I agree that “meeting needs” is an excellent definition of love.
- This is a huge altar call. We’re going to be here a while.
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When I was a kid, we switched back and forth between the Methodist church my dad’s family went to when he was growing up and a couple of different Lutheran churches, one of which was Evangelical Lutheran church. The other, I’m not sure of its affiliation. I just remember that it was in Churchs Ferry, North Dakota (named after a guy with the last name of Church, not a prayin’ church), a tiny village with just a few dozen residents. It’s not even incorporated as a town anymore.
I remember looking forward to Sunday school because I got to see my friends and make trouble for the flustered teachers trying to keep our wisecracking to a minimum. I always dreaded church itself though. They couldn’t find a preacher man (or woman) to make an interesting sermon for crap up there.
I was forced to go to Catholic church and I always thought it was gross when people opened their mouth to let the priest put the Jesus body in there. And everybody drinking out of that same wine chalice–YUCK.
I am SOO thankful that my parents only brought me to church so that I could “experience organized religion” and then stopped to let me make up my own mind about what to believe in.
Crazy hippies…:^)
“Amen”ingist” – you know you should Trademark that word.
You know there’s a test you can take that’ll tell you what you should “Be” http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=10907
Its pretty funny. Apparently I’m supposed to be a Buddist. I was raised Catholic, did the whole Catholic School bit all the way through high school. My mom was Episcopal, so I got to go to a few of their services too – they were always much more fun – much more relaxed too. More comfortable. Catholics suck when it comes to singing anyway. Personally I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster would have a better go at it!
I grew up attending an Assemblies of God church and an Independent Baptist School (2nd thru 7th). I am going to hell for everything – movies, music, clothes, thoughts, deeds – you name it and it was probably a sin. Not that there weren’t some positive things to come out of the experience.
My favorite memory as a kid was the debates we had during Sunday dinner about the sermon or Sunday school. A couple of my sisters are significantly older. So, even at a young age I was exposed to very lively discussions. Although my parents picked some strict religious affiliations, in some ways they were pretty liberal and encouraged us not to believe everything we heard. (They were *not* liberal when it came to discussions of sex or alcohol in regards to their daughters… they just didn’t judge other people.)
Jeremy: I was college age when I started getting in trouble in Sunday school, and it was nervous-laugh-and-change-the-subject sort of trouble.
Hedy: I started to touch on the idea of transubstantiation in this post, but wanted to keep it light so decided to leave it alone.
Lesley: It wasn’t really forced on me past about 10 or 11 (around the times my parents divorced, probably not coincidentally). The Baptist church my stepbrother and I joined was in the neighborhood, and it was on balance a good thing for us. I never attended another Baptist church like it, though.
Brina: That test scores me agnostic. Second is Hinduism. Third is Satanism. Christianity shows up fourth. FTR, I consider myself an agnostic Christian. 🙂
Lea: At least we’ll be together. 🙂
That’s just great… I wear a short skirt when I’m sixteen and I end up in eternity with a Satanist…