Sense of community via church

Tara & I don't see eye to eye on religion & church. There's no animosity or antagonism; we just had very different experiences as kids - both of us had positive church childhoods but they served different purposes & made different impressions on us. Now it is our turn to show Julia what it means to be a part of a community & I have to figure out where church fits in. I'll try to stay away from the spirituality & talk about church as a place and community.

I grew up in a traditional Episcopal Church. The liturgy was celebrated with mid to high levels of formality & pomp. We had red velvet kneeler s, we faced the alter, we lightly genuflected when we entered the pew or the cross passed us. My mom & I went to early service which meant no music from our historic pipe organ & small choir but when I got older I became an acolyte for that late service and got to experience the orthodoxy of the liturgy (washing of the priests' hands, assisting at the communion rail, solemn lighting & snuffing of candles, etc. I liked this formality & ritual. All of which was reinforced when I started to attended catholic school. As far as I was concerned, this is what church was supposed to look & feel like. The rituals of the service & what we did in Sunday school (plus Christmas & Easter programs) was pretty much the extent of my youth church experience. If we did youth programs, other than youth Sunday (Easter) and outreach I never knew about it. If we did youth camp I never went. Whatever outreach & community involvement our church did was the domain of adults. I was heavily involved with the Boy Scouts & it is possible that my church did things but I was already booked for something else but I do not remember anything like helping the underprivileged in the area or food banks or summer camp or retreats or even pizza nights. I remember I saw my fellow youth parishioners on Sunday morning & that was pretty much it.

Tara grew up in a modern, relaxed community focused Methodist Church. The church was purposefully started in a black community. It began with community involvement & social justice in mind. It is, to this day, an activist church. It is a congregation filled with people who have social justice at the top of their agenda within & outside the church. The liturgy is relaxed & comforting in its familial atmosphere; kids are active in the service, there are rocking chairs for those who need them & you see people knitting during service. They use gender neutral language in their prayers & include the congregation in parts of the service like the prayers of the people & even some responses to the gospel. The youth ministry, as I hear Tara & her friends (the first generation of children in the church) talk, always did & continues to have camps & events. They also had mission trips & fed the hungry or helped the homeless. Her friends from her childhood, who are still friends, are church friends, not neighbors or school friends. My childhood friends, the few there are, are from school & the neighborhood. Tara & Julia go almost every Sunday. Julia's Godparents are all church related (Susie is also her Aunt but still, Tara & Susie went to church together). This is what church will look like & be like for Julia.

One thing I love about the church is how they work to have the children participate in & understand the liturgy. Weekly this involves, at the least, the smaller children helping with the communion gifts. After the bread & wine have made it around their halves of the communion circle some of the children meet the pastor in the middle & carry the gifts back up to the altar - part of a loaf of bread, a chalice - & place the items on the table so that the service may continue. A few Sundays ago, Julia carried some of the bread back to the table & she did it with joy & confidence. The way I heard it was the number of kids was limited & Julia was willing. We know she's extraordinarily observant &, like all kids, she wants to do what the older kids do. She goes to church often enough where she knew what was being asked of her & took to it like the diligent toddler she is. I have no qualms or doubts that is this the way to build a sense of community responsibility. This is the type of environment where a child learns what is acceptable behavior as well as where children learn to see themselves as a part of that something larger. Although Tara & I experienced & continue to experience church & spirituality in different ways we both agree that being a part of a church community - a spiritual community - is a way to gain appreciation for being a responsible part of any community to which you are a part.