good friday service

As 8:00 PM EST rolled around, we headed off to church for Good Friday service. Sara hadn't eaten yet, so she stopped by McDonald's for a meal. We took it back to church to eat.

These sort of services are alright, they just don't have spiritual meat for me. I pretty much go just to show my support and to watch over the kids. It's difficult because our church is primarily full of Chinese speakers so english is an afterthought. It's compounded when half the English congregation is composed of youth. I know our church is trying to make an effort to integrate the different congregations more, but it's just not feasible in the current implementation.

As a result, the majority of English speakers go to a different church for their spiritual needs. Whether it be Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Easter, all the major combined holidays are "celebrated" else where. It's not that the English don't like the church, well, some don't, but there really isn't anything at CCCNJ for them during these type of services. It's especially glaring during Christmas service when the majority of SOAR, the college fellowship, is back. They come, but they don't really get anything out of it.

Our only conselation is that we stay in the balcony so we can kind of talk or do our thing without really distracting other people. It's not right, but what are you going to do?

The best solution would be to just drop the whole idea of trying to integrate the different fellowships. Not only are the "celebrations" dragged out longer than they need to because of interpretation, they're boring and unispired to the English. They need to have a seperate celebration for the English congregation. That would, at least, give the English a reason to come. It can be a little more tailor made for their needs and for the age group.

It's difficult criticizing the church and the way it works because a lot of it isn't their fault. They are trying their best, but they're best just isn't in the right direction.

I have the failing where I look at church as if it were a business. In the business of providing spiritual food. Granted church isn't really a business and should probably not be run as one, but that doesn't mean we can't borrow ideas from the business world. We have the same problems of different departments and different branches not really knowing what the rest of the "company" is doing. Would running church a little more like a business help things? I don't know.