America's Next Top Church

As I think I may have forecasted a few posts back, we visited United Presbyterian Church of Manoa yesterday. Angela was a little underwhelmed with their choir. That may sound petty, but her feeling (and I'm more or less with her on this) is that if you're going to do church choir, practice your songs until you can sing the music without making mistakes. It disheartens her when a choir stumbles on the basic execution of the musical notes, during the church service. She was pretty sour about this, but her attitude softened somewhat when a church member showed up at our doorstep roughly three hours after the service with a little welcome gift bag. (Not to try to mollify us about the choir-- I think they do it for all their first-time visitors. ;-) ) She (Angela) said, "Well, maybe we could try one of their other services." (i.e., that doesn't feature the choir that we heard in the 11am service).

Folks that aren't very computer geeky may not get this, but I remarked to Angela on our way home from lunch after church that I currently consider myself to be "safe mode" regarding church involvement. I have retracted myself into myself somewhat, to more easily allow for a phase of browsing, which is largely being directed by Angela. She doesn't really know what she wants, which is fine. I feel that my role is to keep us slow and relaxed, which means--I think--not too many different churches per month, please.