We worship the Lord
Sunday is pretty quiet here so far. Worship was long, as usual. During a time of silent prayer — the bulletin read, “Let us enter into silence to be met by the holy” — the young dad behind me noisily ate candy out of a rattley wrapper. His adorable 3-year-old daughter kicked the seat next to me repeatedly, causing me to wonder, who brings a child that age to a two-hour worship service? It’s not like they don’t print the times on every schedule. I’m all for kids learning to sit through worship, but there are limits!
The outgoing moderator preached, as is tradition. She was presiding at a simultaneous service at San Jose State University. Our balcony seats revealed a stage manager crouched beside a speaker for the duration of the service, conducting the rising and speaking of each liturgist! The poor people at the SJSU campus had to repeatedly watch a live feed of the brass ensemble that was playing in our auditorium. We were stuck with a live feed of the moderator’s sermon on a giant screen that was not visible from our balcony seats.
Sometime during the fifteen-minute offertory, I saw a flurry of activity in the wings. It was the outgoing moderator arriving to preside at communion. Not sure how far she had to travel between locations. Simultaneous worship is a strange thing, but I’m kind of proud of the denomination for attempting it. The whole thing required some strong technical skills, and they pulled it off without any visible glitches, unless you count some slight awkward pauses which they warned us about at the beginning of the service. The whole thing might have been really impressive had they forgone the organist for the one contemporary hymn we sang.
My companion and I departed an hour and a half into the service (just following communion), but there was already a line of old ladies in the bathroom.