I was sitting in church America after being away from it for nine months. The nine months of separation was not due to a holy crusade I embarked on against the “religious establishment”. I had tried that as a teenager. It was hip and irresistible and I liked to be both, but ultimately I was worse off for having disengaged in the activity of church altogether.  It’s cool though, I was hip — and thought I was irresistible.

I don’t want to leave the impression that I was not involved in church. The community in Taiwan I had been a part of for the past nine months gathered for meetings once a week. During those meetings we worshiped, prayed for one another, introduced new people to the community, and someone always brought an encouraging word. This sounds a lot like church, I know. Maybe thats the definition of church. I’m open for interpretation.

I was sitting in church America, padded chair for maximum comfortability, this past Sunday. It was around minute thirty that I was uncomfortably moved. The sermon the pastor gave, even the point he had made in the moment,  loosely correlated with my uncontrollable and uncomfortable perspiration. I’m talking first degree perspiration. Front, back, underarms — you name it.  The sermon’s topic was “Our Unlikely Adventure as Christ Chooses,” but it was the pastor’s two sentence rabbit trail that induced the sweat. My mind, of course, was the rabbit trail and his point Continue Reading…