The worship leader at church has asked all the folks my age to come to a meeting on Saturday to talk about worship and “what meaningful times of worshipping God look like” for us.

My first reaction was, well, I don’t really worship God much these days so I shouldn’t go. But then I thought, well, one of the big reasons I don’t go to church is because of the pervasive androcentrism that make it extremely unpleasant for me to even sit through a service as a passive observer, let alone a worshipper.

So should I go and tell him that?

I’m curious as to what you, dear reader, would do if you were in this situation (however unlikely it might be that you would be in the situation.

Let’s say you are at a non-accredited (that is, not for credit in a recognized degree program) Bible school abroad, in a country where you do not speak the language. You are enjoying the experience and one weekend you, and a fellow student, go to a salon where you pay over $150 and sit in a chair for many hours in order to have your hair arranged in the dreadlocked style.

You return to the Bible school campus and are told by Leadership that you have a choice to make: you can stay home from upcoming “outreach” trips to nearby churches which are sometimes conservative, or you can go on the outreach, after cutting off your dreadlocks.

What do you do?

I pretty much haven’t gone to church all summer, such has been my frame of mind. But the thing is, I may not be up for church or any Christianing, but I still care about a lot of people who happen to be Christians and church-goers, and I want to spend time with them. Just not in the pew. Y’know.

Today I skipped the service but did join the crew for a trip to Boston Pizza for lunch. I got to catch up with Elf, who just finished her first week as a full-fledged grade one teacher, give GoodFaith a welcome-home hug (she summers in Australia) and make fun of G-Knit.

I think I’m going to attend the weekly bible studies; we’ll see how they go. The book we’re doing (because, in our culture, small groups must always “do” a book) is Blue Like Jazz, a tome which I read (what seems like) long ago and which I didn’t find terribly revolutionary; that said, its effect on others less ornery than I may be quite different.

Steev is now the de-facto “leader” of the college/career-age group at First Church of Suburbia, and he mentioned that existing C&Cers should seek out any other members of our age group (currently, 18-25) and invite them to events. He meant eligible members within the church, but someone thought he meant people from outside the church. Thus began a semi-comedic riff on recruiting, with Steev saying he expects us to bring five new people to each event and Matty K laughing at that, and then Steve saying, Why are you laughing? You don’t think I’m serious? and then me saying, We knew you weren’t serious because five is too small a number, we’ll be bringing TEN each! And then Steev said maybe we could get points for bringing people.

And then I said, well, you would have to give point values to certain types of people.

First example: someone who already goes to church - 1 point. Someone who was raised in the church - 2 points.

Naturally, it goes on from there.

Virgin - 1 point
Non-virgin - 3 points
Catholic - 3 points
Anglican - 2 points
Agnostic - 5 points
Athiest - 10 points (highest value)
Someone who’s served prison time - 9 points

This is such a great idea, I’m sure that some denominations already do it.

Back in the day when I was all devout and shit, I was always terrible at recruiting. I’m probably masking deep psychological scars by making light of the whole thing now but that’s my way, what can I say?