It’s been a while since I’ve given a this-is-how-things-really-are post, since there’s not often much positive to discuss on the learning-to-love-living-in-SoCal-front. The friend situation hasn’t really changed much, except that one of the three families we actually hung out with has moved away. We just started back up with CBS, which is always fun, and lots of people talked about getting our kids together, but I’ve learned not to expect too much follow through.
But…maybe things are getting better. Some of you know we’ve visited 13 churches in our attempts to find a church home out here. It’s a horrible, exhausting process trying to figure out what is vital and what doesn’t matter in a church home. I’d given up on music–the SoCal standard is to turn off all the lights so that you’re standing in pitch black watching a gravelly-voiced group of hipsters with skinny jean shorts (on men!), handlebar mustaches, and heavily coiffed hair perform a concert of music only composed in the past 5 years, all to the soothing beat of a drum set and several base guitars so heavily amped that you can’t hear yourself think, let alone wonder why no one else is singing, either. Needless to say, this is not our preferred worship style.
We always sortof knew about Pacific Crossroads, and I really didn’t want to drive 45 minutes to church, but after a few tearful attempts at revisiting local churches we’d already tried, we made the drive. And it is worth the inconvenience. They’re our kind of people–from all over, not just “from here” with no understanding of life outside of SoCal. We have yet to see if the friendliness is more than the superficial SoCal friendliness where talking about getting together is just as good as actually doing it, but I have hope that people who have lived elsewhere in the world might actually mean it. The preaching is really solid. The kids still spend the whole service separated from us, which really bugs me, but at least they have a joint kids’ worship time where they are learning some of the modern standards (Your Love Makes Me Sing, etc), and they all seem to be learning and enjoying children’s church. We joined a small group–mostly lawyers, professors, businesspeople, with lots in common with Derek, and though I’m bummed that I’m the only sahm, they are all super friendly and welcoming and have kids our kids’ ages. And the music is good. It’s a contemporary band of less-obnoxious hipsters (yes, their last album was released on EP, but their jeans are not skin-tight), but they’re actually talented. And we sing everything, from the greatest old hymns (Oh Worship the King, which we’re learning as a family this month!) to new things they’re composing right now (I’m loving the songs on this album put out by the worship team). Recent offertories have included a Bach piano piece, a solo Chris Tomlin song, and a professional harpist playing “Be Thou My Vision” (my favorite hymn!). It’s the kind of true diversity in church music that we’ve rarely seen since our HTC days. In fact, this church reminds us a lot of HTC, just stick in hot Santa Monica for freezing Chicago.
So I guess we’re cautiously optimistic about church for the first time in a really long time.
You say “handlebar mustaches” like it’s a bad thing….