whistle while you church.
i’m listening to… “hallelujah” by jeff buckley [cover].
nicholas hubbard and i decided to head over to church today. a while ago he had mentioned that for a while he went to all these different churches and kept a blog of his experiences in those churches. so i mentioned i wanted to go to a pentacostal church (to hear people speak in tongue), so he found one. only… they didn’t speak in tongues. but it was still kind of interesting. the church was the “bethel christian church” in the central district. this is going to sound kind of ignorant, but wow, there are a lot of black people in the central district. like… i don’t see *that* many black people in seattle, but that’s all i saw in the central district. it’s just interesting.
as soon as we walked in, we were greeted by a handful of people who were really nice. one lady, i forgot her name, was particularly nice and gave us these little booklets with bible verses in them. haha. she came up to us and was like, “shalom” to nick cause he looks a little jewish, and he was like “what?” and she said, “shalom,” and he’s like, “oh, no.” and then she turned to me and was like “ni hao ma?” and i was like, “yep, that’s right,” and she’s like, “yay at least i got one out of two!”
mostly everyone in there was old. and everyone was black. we must have stood out quite a bit. but people were all very nice and genuine (with the exception of one girl, notably).
let’s see. it began with singing and more singing. but what was interesting is that their singing didn’t include lyrics for people in the pews to sing. there were like… seven? choir people onstage, including a couple of instrumentalists. the first couple songs were good, but bylike, the third or forth, shit, the songs were really godamn good. so good. nothing i’ve heard before in church, but still good. it was fucking intense, though. i thought i was going to like faint at some point. i got all light-headed. it didn’t help that the sun just happened to be shining in from the window at me, either.
followed by that were some prayers. their prayers were largely of the, “we need you to get through the day, lord!” type nature, “thank you lord!” type nature. certainly nothing i was used to in church, but that was okay. it even got a bit repetitive in the sense that i soon had no idea what the guy praying was even talking about. it was dizzying.
next came the offering… they passed around these little buckets, and the usher (wearing white gloves of the snazzy variety) picked them up.
then came the offertory stewardship, with a message by some guy about “god’s purpose for money.” i don’t quite remember what it was about, but i did take down some quotes. because quotes are great.
“if [god] will not open you up the windows of heaven…’ - you can open your bedroom window, your kitchen window, a picture window… no window will be as big as god’s window in heaven.”
next came announcements, and they welcomed us by telling us to stand up. i had written on the card i had turned in that i was referred to the church by “myself” and the lady got a kick out of that and said that, “vivian has come by invitation of herself.”
after that was some shaking of hands and meeting of people… it was fairly entertaining. lots of half-assed hugs and some real hugs. one girl was like walking by and thought that she should hug nick but then didn’t really want to and the result was like this half-hug, half-running away type deal. it was amusing.
then came more songs with the choir singing and no lyrics.
then came this oh my god. sermon. holy. let me start off by saying that before he really launched greatly into the sermon he mentioned that they were collecting $$ for a sister church in alaska. he’s like, “i need $1,000.” so we literally waited there until he got $1,000. it started off with a couple people giving $100 each, and then it was just this uncomfortable peer pressure type thing until people slowly coughed up the rest of the money. at some point he’s like, “if you don’t have money, that’s cause you haven’t asked for god’s help. hell, you can ask me for help, i have a couple thousand dollars in my pocket right now,” and he like pulled out a wad of cash out of his pocket. like. wtfuz.
i guess there was also a couple who had called him the previous night, fighting. he had talked to one person, then hung up and talked to the other person. he revealed to everyone in the church that it was fighting because the man ate 6 of the woman’s cookies. haha. they’d better have been girl scout cookies (which i bought this morning)!
alright. some other quotes from his sermon, cause he said some amazing shit.
ON FELLOWSHIP:
“women need to worship together. women need to get together. women need to know how to cook. women need to know how to sew.”
ON CHILDREN:
“sometimes momma gotta whip him, amen, but sometimes he touches her heart, amen.”
ON FRIDAY NIGHTS:
“friday night is not for you to stay home and act a foo’.”
ON FAMILY:
“a family that prays together, stays together. a family that eats together… gets fat together.”
there was also a mention of acts 2:45, and how god blesses people with money in the sense that they have two cars and a house that was formerly a mansion… like these were the things that matter. he also read a bible verse and then randomly went into a rant about how people need to have clean houses.
after his uhhh all-over-the-place and hardly enlightening or particularly religious sermon, there was an invitation, where people who wanted to be prayed for went up to the altar and got oil on their foreheads. they were prayed for. we sat in our seats and watched as people went up. one guy had like 4 guys putting their hands on him and praying for him.
this one guy came to us and put oil on our foreheads and prayed for us… nice gesture, i guess. but ew, oil.
after that was the benediction, which is a blur. and then we left. 
the whole church probably had like, 25 people?? 30? 35? i’m bad at this stuff.
afterwards, i dropped nick off and rachel and i went to i heart rummage at its new location at chop suey. it was pretty f00king disappointing, actually. nothing of quality (or new) really. i want to make some shit. sigh. i’m so lame.
after that we went to this REAL rummage sale. unfortunately it was the last day of the rummage sale and we missed out on the good stuff, but i got a bunch of christmas cards which i think are fucking hilarious. i’ll scan some sometime. i love giving people christmas cards that are like… ridiculous and funny. ahhaha oh man. i have some ridiculous ones. i think i got at least like 50, and a couple books (50 years of best photos from life magazine and a disneyland book)… and it all only cost me $2.00!!!!!!!!
March 12th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I will admit that was pretty funny to read.. especially about the part of you inviting yourself… I’ve been to the CD a few times in my life. Although I dont live there anymore, I still miss downtown Seattle
.. hehe..