Oh church.

Most of you who read this regularly probably know that Jack and I attend a small Pentecostal church on the far edge of Lupeni.  Neither of us had ever attended a Pentecostal church in the United States -- Jack grew up Presbyterian; I was the daughter of Reformed-turned-evangelical-Covenant-church-planters; we both graduated from Calvin College.  Although the church we attended there for almost four years was a pretty charismatic one, its connections to both the CRC and RCA kept us in mostly-familiar theological territory.  And although the racial diversity of that congregation, and the eccentric and lovable personality of its pastor (Biker Gang Sunday, for instance, or Super Bowl parties in the sanctuary) often brought us new experiences and questions to grapple with, this transition in our ecclesiastical experience has been... a leap of faith, I guess.

Let's start with last Sunday.  We were attending the evening service, as we often do (true confession, lest my CRC relatives admire our devoutness -- we don't go to both morning and evening services, as they are both at least 2 or 3 hours long and that's a lot for me on a day of rest.  We also almost never attend the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Saturday services.  Err.)  Anyway.  After the service ended, someone mentioned that a "sister" had died, and that her wake was that evening.  The funeral parlor is just a five-minute walk from our church, and it's on our way home, so we were sort-of swept into the crowd as everyone herded across the street and into the funeral parlor.  And there we stayed for the next hour, filling the lily-scented room with its cracked blue tile floor, arranged in a semicircle around the foot of the coffin where this sister lay in her Sunday best.  I had never met the woman, and I don't think many of the others had either, as she was apparently a recent convert.  But yet we sang from tattered songbooks that somehow emerged out of pockets and purses, and then listened as a few of the church's elders preached, impromptu, about the importance of being prepared to meet our Creator.  Honestly, it didn't seem like a particularly comforting experience for the grieving family members who stood there listening silently, occasionally wiping away tears or brushing away flies from bouquets.  But afterwards we were gladly served sugary pastries and Fanta, poured into plastic cups in that persistent way of Romanian hospitality, and I just wasn't sure what to make of it all.

Or then there was last Thursday, when Jack and I decided to attend the prayer service so that we could meet with a youth afterwards to practice some music for the following Sunday.  We were late, and walked in just in time to hear a preacher on a video announcing that anyone who wanted to be baptized in the gift of tongues could come forward to receive the Holy Spirit's anointing -- and then there people went, for the next 45 minutes, praying fervently and wildly and loudly, clapping and singing and yelling.  And again, I just wasn't sure what to make of it all.

I'm really thankful for this church, and for the ways it is stretching me and making me wonder, opening me up to new experiences, and forcing me to take seriously parts of the Christian tradition that I'd always sort-of ignored.  I'm not at all able to wrap up this blog post tidily with some sort of conclusion about "making progress" or "coming to peace" or anything.  I still am skeptical much of the time.  I still have lots and lots of questions and reservations about all sorts of things that happen at Betel.  But I also find myself caring more and more for the people there, and finding them more and more inspiring, and becoming more and more curious about the ways the Holy Spirit works in ways unfamiliar to me -- and open to it, even if it's only one grudging centimeter at a time.  I'm not about to take off my thinking cap any time soon, and the Biblical teachings that were so ingrained in me in my childhood are still present and always, always bumping around in my head.  But the questions of culture and different Christian traditions and poverty and language, plus the wild workings of the Spirit... and I'm just not sure what to make of it all.

Which maybe, now that I think about it, is just about the right posture to have when it comes to things that are Holy... like church.