I've been visiting churches lately. And by "visiting churches" I mean I've taken several weeks, to convince myself that going to one church or another is a good idea, dragged myself to a service and felt tortured the full time I was attending service and/or Sunday school.

I think the problem is the size. Size does matter.

I am used to small churches. I guess I just like them better.

The church I went to last month disturbed me when the swing band up on stage started blasting out "It is Well With My Soul" full horns and drums. The worship leader was snapping and swiveling his hips in a way that would have made Elvis proud and I was thinking, 'This is a song written by a man who had just lost his three daughters! I don't imagine him swing dancing across the deck as his ship passed over the waters where his children drown.'

In the church I went to today the pastor kept saying, "Does your heart beat a skip?" I know I'm way too critical- but it so easy when they hand it to me like that. It makes my little ESL heart beat a skip.

The Sunday school teacher was telling a joke: Let me see if I can remember it- An atheist was angry about the fact that everyone had holidays to celebrate except him- so he got a lawyer and said, "Look, the Christians have Easter and Christmas, the Jews have Hannakah and Lent- . . ." It is at this point that that my head tilted to the right and I thought, 'Did he just say the Jews have Lent?!'

And the rest of what he had to say was out the window- I mean if he thinks the Jews own Lent, what's the point of going on?

But the rest of the joke- the Jews have Lent- and I demand a holiday for atheists! So they went to court and presented the case. The judge listened, but when the argument was presented he slammed his gavel down and said, this case is dismissed! The atheist said, "What! I want a holiday!" The judge responded, "In the Psalms it says, "The fool says in his heart there is no God." You have a holiday, it is April 1st."

That was just a filler, the projector was down, and obviously it was useless to try to give a speach off a piece of paper when there was a perfectly malfunctioning powerpoint projector in the room.

The joke didn't fill the whole time the projector was down, so some other guy got up to give an announcement- he asked us when they should move the class time to (how could I know?) and told us we needed to be "Kinda specific."

Kinda specific.
Really.