At the Crossroads
It's been a while. Since my last entry we've visited three more churches. It looks like we have settled on one, but I thought I'd mention the two (besides Manoa) that got just one visit.
On Easter we went to Sharon Baptist Church. We didn't know anything about it; it turns out to be an African-American megachurch, right within the Philadelphia city limits. It was founded in 1934, in South Philadelphia. In 1982 it had 282 members and was located at 59th and Catharine, in West Philadelphia. They started to have space problems, and in 1999 they constructed a brand-new building not far from the reservoir, across the city line from Bala Cynwyd.
(I'm going to take a jab at the University of Pennsylvania here. I found out about Sharon because at Angela's request I was looking for a service that started at 11:30 or 12pm. After googling around for a bit, I found this. Sharon's main location hasn't been at 59th and Catharine since *1999*, and in all this time this information hasn't been refreshed on a page dedicated to "diversity" at Penn?)
Your jaw drops when you drive up to this building. This picture that Angela took with my cell phone doesn't quite do it justice:
So anyway, it now has 6,000 members. The sanctuary itself is vast, seats two, maybe three thousand. It was pretty well filled (by the time the sermon started, anyway) on this Easter Sunday, but it was made sparklingly clear by the pastor, repeatedly, that many of the 6,000 members are not very regular in their attendance.
We were late, so we missed whatever music they might have had early in the service, but we were electrified by a performance of "He Is Worthy" by their decent-sized choir, for the offertory. It sounded *exactly* like the studio recording we hear on Praise 103.9 FM. Anyway--megachurch. Flawless multimedia. On-premises restaurant of some sort (we didn't see it). Many attendees dressed as they would going to the movies-- i.e., their regular clothes. That's a big deal for a black Baptist church, and that "come as you are" atmosphere is obviously part of the reason they have so many members.
Angela (and I, and Abigail) loved the music, but the big church thing was a bit much for her. Perhaps more than that, I think she wants church to be a little bit more churchy. I am probably misrepresenting her somewhat, but that's the best I can do at the moment.
Ok, moving on. The next week we went to the African Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas. Hard to find a bigger contrast between this place and Sharon Baptist. Angela had far fewer comments about this church-- I don't think she was really tempted to return. If folks in street clothes filling a plush concert arena isn't her idea of church, neither is an Episcopal mass, really. I wouldn't have any problem with joining a church like this, and I liked the fact that the pastor ("rector", technically) is involved in local inter-faith stuff. But I spent the first 10 years or so (until almost 14 years old) of my churchgoing life attending Catholic mass.
So finally, on April 22, we visited the church that's been staring us in the face since we moved to our current residence: Overbrook Presbyterian Church. Not too cold, not too hot. Small (15 or 20 people) but powerful traditional choir. Intimate T-shaped sanctuary, reasonably well filled. Appealing young pastor. Very multicolored congregation, good age distribution. Very clean building, in good repair. Decent amount of parking, not quite sufficient for all (I found that out when I got there five minutes late the following Sunday), but we managed to get a spot in the lot that first day (on which, incidently, we were on time!) Perfectly satisfactory accommodation for our two and a half year old. One mile from our house.
Overbrook calls itself "The Church at the Crossroads". It is located at an important intersection (of routes 1 and 30) at the edge of Philadelphia. Across the street, in Wynnewood, is Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern Bapist Seminary) and St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Seminary. A bit further down Lancaster is Lankenau Hospital, where Abigail was born. A little ways down City Avenue is St. Joseph's University. On the Philadelphia side are the sprawling neighborhoods of Wynnefield and Overbrook, both of which are majority African-American.
It's at (or relatively near, anyway) another sort of crossroads as well, which may be the reason it came "unrecommended" by someone (Angela can't remember who) at Woodland: the divide within the PC(USA) and all the other mainline denominations over how to view homosexuality in general, and ordination of non-celibate homosexuals as pastors in particular. Overbrook is part of the Covenant Network, which is trying to remove an explicit prohibition against homosexual ordination from the PC(USA) constitution (aka Book of Order). Woodland, on the other hand, is a member, albeit somewhat noncommittal, of the Confessing Church Movement, which is staunchly opposed to any change in the rule. (See also this Wikipedia article about the more general mainline Protestant phenomenon.) How noncommittal? A search of "confessing" on their website does not yield a reference to Confessing Church. But the fact remains that Woodland leans conservative enough to have voted as a congregation to follow the senior pastor's lead to join the movement in 2002, shortly before he moved on from Woodland.
Anyway, yesterday was our third visit in as many weeks. We've started to meet a few interesting people. We found out that the pastor will not be there much longer, as his family is moving out of town for his wife's work. But we still feel comfortable and secure there, and we're looking forward to setting down our roots.
On Easter we went to Sharon Baptist Church. We didn't know anything about it; it turns out to be an African-American megachurch, right within the Philadelphia city limits. It was founded in 1934, in South Philadelphia. In 1982 it had 282 members and was located at 59th and Catharine, in West Philadelphia. They started to have space problems, and in 1999 they constructed a brand-new building not far from the reservoir, across the city line from Bala Cynwyd.
(I'm going to take a jab at the University of Pennsylvania here. I found out about Sharon because at Angela's request I was looking for a service that started at 11:30 or 12pm. After googling around for a bit, I found this. Sharon's main location hasn't been at 59th and Catharine since *1999*, and in all this time this information hasn't been refreshed on a page dedicated to "diversity" at Penn?)
Your jaw drops when you drive up to this building. This picture that Angela took with my cell phone doesn't quite do it justice:
So anyway, it now has 6,000 members. The sanctuary itself is vast, seats two, maybe three thousand. It was pretty well filled (by the time the sermon started, anyway) on this Easter Sunday, but it was made sparklingly clear by the pastor, repeatedly, that many of the 6,000 members are not very regular in their attendance.
We were late, so we missed whatever music they might have had early in the service, but we were electrified by a performance of "He Is Worthy" by their decent-sized choir, for the offertory. It sounded *exactly* like the studio recording we hear on Praise 103.9 FM. Anyway--megachurch. Flawless multimedia. On-premises restaurant of some sort (we didn't see it). Many attendees dressed as they would going to the movies-- i.e., their regular clothes. That's a big deal for a black Baptist church, and that "come as you are" atmosphere is obviously part of the reason they have so many members.
Angela (and I, and Abigail) loved the music, but the big church thing was a bit much for her. Perhaps more than that, I think she wants church to be a little bit more churchy. I am probably misrepresenting her somewhat, but that's the best I can do at the moment.
Ok, moving on. The next week we went to the African Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas. Hard to find a bigger contrast between this place and Sharon Baptist. Angela had far fewer comments about this church-- I don't think she was really tempted to return. If folks in street clothes filling a plush concert arena isn't her idea of church, neither is an Episcopal mass, really. I wouldn't have any problem with joining a church like this, and I liked the fact that the pastor ("rector", technically) is involved in local inter-faith stuff. But I spent the first 10 years or so (until almost 14 years old) of my churchgoing life attending Catholic mass.
So finally, on April 22, we visited the church that's been staring us in the face since we moved to our current residence: Overbrook Presbyterian Church. Not too cold, not too hot. Small (15 or 20 people) but powerful traditional choir. Intimate T-shaped sanctuary, reasonably well filled. Appealing young pastor. Very multicolored congregation, good age distribution. Very clean building, in good repair. Decent amount of parking, not quite sufficient for all (I found that out when I got there five minutes late the following Sunday), but we managed to get a spot in the lot that first day (on which, incidently, we were on time!) Perfectly satisfactory accommodation for our two and a half year old. One mile from our house.
Overbrook calls itself "The Church at the Crossroads". It is located at an important intersection (of routes 1 and 30) at the edge of Philadelphia. Across the street, in Wynnewood, is Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern Bapist Seminary) and St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Seminary. A bit further down Lancaster is Lankenau Hospital, where Abigail was born. A little ways down City Avenue is St. Joseph's University. On the Philadelphia side are the sprawling neighborhoods of Wynnefield and Overbrook, both of which are majority African-American.
It's at (or relatively near, anyway) another sort of crossroads as well, which may be the reason it came "unrecommended" by someone (Angela can't remember who) at Woodland: the divide within the PC(USA) and all the other mainline denominations over how to view homosexuality in general, and ordination of non-celibate homosexuals as pastors in particular. Overbrook is part of the Covenant Network, which is trying to remove an explicit prohibition against homosexual ordination from the PC(USA) constitution (aka Book of Order). Woodland, on the other hand, is a member, albeit somewhat noncommittal, of the Confessing Church Movement, which is staunchly opposed to any change in the rule. (See also this Wikipedia article about the more general mainline Protestant phenomenon.) How noncommittal? A search of "confessing" on their website does not yield a reference to Confessing Church. But the fact remains that Woodland leans conservative enough to have voted as a congregation to follow the senior pastor's lead to join the movement in 2002, shortly before he moved on from Woodland.
Anyway, yesterday was our third visit in as many weeks. We've started to meet a few interesting people. We found out that the pastor will not be there much longer, as his family is moving out of town for his wife's work. But we still feel comfortable and secure there, and we're looking forward to setting down our roots.
posted by Joel GL at 10:57 AM
3 Comments:
The covenant network is pretty middle of the road when it comes to LGBT inclusion. I don't think that the network is actually looking to remove the offending passage. The website calls for an "authoritative interpretation", whatever that means. Essentially, I think they're for the question of ordination being left up to individual presbyteries.
Look here, under "Covenant Network's Program Commitments", fifth bullet point: "Work for needed changes in the church, including the eventual removal of G-6.0106b."
But I think my inclusion of this facet of Overbrook Pres as part of their "crossroads" motif is corroborated by the statement on this same page that the Network's appeal is to the "broad middle". I guess because I've spent so much time on the "right", that "middle" seems pretty "left" to me. I wonder who the Network would consider to be to the "left" of them.
I would guess this group.
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