hope you had a great Christmas !

I meant to post about a church I visited recently but couldn't find the time. (Or, if I did post about it, I've forgotten.) Well, I was really excited to visit this church, CofR, because a friend of mine had visited it before and she was excited about the diversity of this church! LA is a big city with a lot of minority groups and when I was moving out here, my profs were really excited for me because well, I work on race and minority issues. But since getting here, a lot of the churches I've visited have been homogenous, i.e. mostly white or mostly black or mostly latino or mostly chinese, etc.

The Alt_er, which I've been going to does have people of color but it was still surprisingly homogenous. This doesn't make it a bad church, in fact, I quite like it and I've gotten really fond of my small group too. People are friendly and nice, and every now and then, because of its location, people from the street--clearly homeless--have come in for services. It is a church that opens its doors to people from all walks of life, even those who don't dress or smell right.

But the pastor at Alt_er still doesn't know my name even though he has walked by me or sat by me a few times. I think that's pretty shocking for a church that's about 100. I don't need the pastor to be my new best friend, but not to even say hello, how are you? Well, others in the church are friendly enough so you could say that the community as a church takes responsibility for welcoming strangers and newcomers, and that's a great philosophy to have.

Contrast that, however, with CofR. The one and only time I've been there, the pastor made it a point to talk to me TWICE, and he invited me to join his family for Christmas brunch when he heard I was going to be in town for the holidays. CofR is smaller (60 or so members) but they also have fewer resources available to them. Anyway, I did want to get that off my chest.

But really, I was posting because I just got back from brunch with Pastor K and family, plus a few other guests. It was delicious, simple, fun, and I got to hear more about how CofR is committed to being a church in a neighborhood that isn't at all what you would call wealthy, and where more often than not, there are very real racial tensions. The church doesn't have a website (how my friend found it is a long story) because they've been focused on being there for, and trying to meet the needs of, their local neighborhood.

So, even though I really want to commit to attending a "local" church, i.e. within a 10 min drive from my apt, I'm really thinking seriously of attending the CofR, which requires me to get on the freeway. I think I could learn a lot from this church.

This isn't to say that CofR is a perfect or even exemplary church, although obviously, I think it tries hard to model certain principles. And this isn't to say that Alt_er isn't worth going to or anything like that. There is much I respect about that church, and I will certain keep attending the small group until the end of the year, i.e. the summer. But I think it would be exciting to be at CofR.

I will say that all the churches I've visited in LA are committed to giving back to the community and providing services, resources, or friendships to people in need. This is especially true of the larger churches that have more resources at their disposal, and it has really heartened me. I'm not claiming that any of these churches are without weakness, but it does seem to me that they are doing their best to give.

Well, I had a good Christmas. It helped me pause from the madness of writing for awhile. I'll have to go back to work tomorrow. But it was really good to stop, and listen to the other kinds of stories that are floating around.