Starting Point Church in Raleigh

Just had an amazing Easter service at Starting Point Church and, I had planned to take this weekend off, and not do a weekend post, but I just feel so strongly about what God is doing in my life and in my church, that I wanted to share this video showing a little bit about Starting Point - Raleigh.

I know it's 5 minutes long which, in internet time, is like sitting down to watch "Gone With the Wind", but it's a really amazing video.  It's got everything, including bathtub baptisms and toilet-chucking.  (Look for "toilet-chucking" in the next summer games.)  Watch the video, and check out the awesome things that are happening in Raleigh.

Personal Ads: Goldilocks seeking church.

If you're a churchgoer, unless you've gone to the same church your whole life, you've been in this boat.  Maybe you've moved, or just had a falling-out with your old church, but for whatever reason, you're looking for a new church home.  So you visit different places every Sunday, trying on churches like you would a prom dress, looking for that "perfect fit".  A lucky few find that right place right away, maybe in the first month of searching.

A few less lucky (or just pickier) people do like me, and half a decade passes before you join anywhere for good.

For the most part, I'm very glad for how things worked out.  I love my church and feel lucky to have found it.  But I don't think I should have spent 5 years barely going anywhere because nowhere was "juuust right".

Here's some of the reasons, good, and not so good, why myself and others cross prospective churches off our lists:

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I want to be a toddler for a day.

I used to always say that, if I had to come back for another life, I wanted to be a housecat. They live like ancient royalty, with servants waiting on them hand and foot.

But, looking at my son's life, I think it'd be pretty cool to be a toddler again.

My husband is the one who got me thinking about it this morning. It's gotten miserably cold (again), and we both had a hard time getting out of bed for work this morning. While helping my son get his coat on, he said, "Daddy wants to go to preschool with you, and play and nap and have snacktime."

Which really doesn't sound too bad. Do some arts & crafts, listen to storytime...That's an awesome day. And it's not just preschool. My son's weekends are pretty sweet, as well. He lives like a celebrity every day of the year. Let's take a look at his typical Sunday.

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The fluidity of time based on day of the week.

This is going to be more of a blurb, really, but this is something my family struggles with, and I wonder if it's an issue for other parents out there, as well.

My husband and I have to be at work by 7:15 and 7:30 every weekday, respectively. This is compounded by the fact that we have to get my son ready and out the door also, and his daycare doesn't open until 7:00. Nevertheless, we have our routine down to a tee, (honestly, I could give the exact time at which I brush my hair, my teeth, put on make-up, etc.), and we are very rarely either of us late to work.

On Sunday, all we have to do is roll out of bed and get to church by 9:00. Now, despite what the image would have you believe, our church actually meets in a movie theater and is very casual; I dress up a lot less for church than I do for work. Also, our church is very close to where we live, actually about the exact same distance as we are from our work. We also don't have to get my son's diaper bag so packed, since he only stays in the nursery for about an hour during service.

Despite all this, we are almost always running late to church, week after week. Does anyone know why this happens?

Uh-oh. Took too long posting. Gotta run.

Sanitizing the Bible: When Christianity isn't baby-friendly

For those who may not be aware, the Bible is not PG. Not even PG-13. There are more than enough passages to warrant a solid R rating.

I'm not just referring to the obvious stuff either, like Song of Solomon, or the massacre of the innocents. There is some very depraved and raunchy stuff in the Bible. :cough: Lot's daughers :cough:

But you don't normally think about that stuff. Or, at least, I don't. Normally, when I remember things from the Bible, I just think of the books I really enjoy, like Galatians, or Proverbs, or Ecclesiastes. (A really cool and visual verse is Ecclesiastes 10:1, "Dead flies doth cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour, so doth a little folly ruin a reputation for wisdom and honour." The unnecessary "u"s should be indication that I learned it in the Old King James version.)

But a couple of months back, our church charged us with trying to read all the way through the Bible in a year. They even gave us handy little reading charts that break it up so you read about three chapters a day, two from Old Testament and one from New. (The idea is that you have the New Testament there to help you get through some of the really slow parts in the Old Testament. Can you imagine reading nothing but Leviticus for a month? I've tried to do it in the past, and it was mentally painful.)

It's always been a goal of mine to read through the whole Bible, so I joined a small group with two other women in my congregation and we meet once a week to hold each other accountable and discuss what we thought of that week's reading. I even started looking back through the toddler-friendly collection of Bible stories I got my son as an infant, figuring he's about to the age where he can enjoy it, and relate it back to the stories they're learning in class.

It was in comparing my adult, big-girl Bible and my son's "Bible" that I realized just how much they had to leave out. And, even worse, how much more they should have left out.

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