Reservations

Church at home feels a lot different from the churches I've experienced in the Bay area. I've been going to the same church since first grade since it was connected to the elementary-middle school I went to. Haven't bothered to change much since then, partly out of laziness and partly because I've never really been home long enough since college started to invest in another community. Not to mention I'm moving up in a couple of months.

Things I've noticed in the past while:

1. The church campus has changed a lot in the past 4 years. There used to be a lot of other buildings here, back when my school occupied the campus during the week. (the school moved to a different campus my last year there). They got torn down and replaced with a couple of new, smaller or more compressed buildings, resulting in there being a wide walkway where there used to be building. I can still remember the old campus pretty vividly in my head; I revisit it in my dreams sometimes. If anything, it felt a lot bigger in my memory.

2. I only noticed my first week back here that almost all of the congregation is white. For some reason it never occurred to me until now to look at the makeup of the people attending, or I just never thought about it, and it never bothered me. The more that I think about it, I realize Berkeley was my first real exposure to a place with majority Asian composition.

3. I have no problem with the sermons, but I don't feel comfortable with the fact that there are stagelights (as if we're at a concert... in some senses it all feels like one) and that lyrics for worship are overlayed on a videofeed of the singers themselves that changes camera angles frequently. It feels like watching a televangelist service within the service itself, and it makes me start to question what exactly is being valued in service nowadays. I mean, at least to someone who's familiar with smaller churches, a lot of the stuff going on around the stage is pretty distracting. Most of this was only added in the past couple of years too.

4. The church has grown big enough that they even have a parking shuttle now to transport people to the parking lot across the street. At my high school.

5. There's the tradition when the service starts to shake hands and say hello to the people sitting around you, which has been around for as long as I can remember. However, after the service ends, we never really stick around long enough to talk to anyone other than say hi to one or two families we recognize if we see them. A lot of times I get the impression that the people I shake hands with don't really want to do this... but either way, it's pretty impersonal.

6. Messages are targeted more for a suburban family demographic that tend to be living pretty well off (seeing as how it's the OC), with more emphasis on the practical. A lot of the newer stuff they've been covering here wind up being stuff I already knew to a certain extent from other experiences (going to IV and other churches has its perks). I was surprised to hear the word hermeneutics used last week, though - I guess I wasn't expecting that kind of stuff to show up here. In light of the May 21 scare, it was nice to hear straight from the pulpit a "don't take Revelation so literally, cause you're missing the point" message, I guess.

7. I still feel like an outsider after all these years. Granted, I haven't really tried to fit in either - and to be honest I feel really disconnected from the community here, in part because of the general demographics and how big it's grown. I have trouble picturing myself living in this kind of environment in the future - it just doesn't feel... right to me.

This is more reflective of how I feel about living here in general, though: I'm fine staying at my parent's house for breaks and whatnot, but I honestly cannot picture myself in this environment on my own, as an adult, as an individual. Even though it's nice to not have to worry about stuff like having your mail stolen or shady people on the street (I used to have nightmares about gunmen breaking into our yard when I was younger) - it's too nice. Living comfortably has never felt so uncomfortable.