Crazy church service

Hello Everyone,

I don't know how I do it, but I seem to be very good at finding crazy church services around Easter. I have a deal with Jerry that he only has to attend church twice a year with me - Christmas & Easter. He's pretty good natured about it (grew up in the Lutheran church).

So, the negotiation this year was Good Friday vs Easter. Since we were hoping to snowboard on Sunday, Good Friday it was. We wanted to find a church midway between Calgary & Lethbridge so we'd make it to Easter lupper (who serves turkey dinner at 2pm?).

Lots of small towns and although they had churches, most didn't have website and none of the websites mentioned a Good Friday service. So, I came across a local newspaper with an invitation:

"Experience a re-enactment of Christ's Tomb on Friday, April 2 at 11 a.m. at the Fort Macleod Alliance Church."

Sounds exciting! Neither of us had any clue how you re-enact a tomb or who the Alliance church was but we had an address and a time.

So, we show up at the church.

When you opened the front door, there were two legionnaires (complete with skirts and spears) who "guarded" a door made up to look like two rocks. Already it looked more interesting than most services I've been to.

They opened the "rocks" so we could "pay our respects" at the tomb. The next room had no lights but tea lights marked the path with a mummy (Jesus) on a raised section of the "cave". A bit creepy but it did answer how someone re-enacts a tomb.

Then we headed into a perfectly normal sanctuary. Rather pretty with candles along the sides. Then we saw a hooded figure near the front who looked like the grim reaper without his sycthe.

But still, things were going pretty normal. They had an overhead projecter with a counter so you knew when church was going to start "The church service will begin in 2:09 minutes" etc. I was curious what would happen when it reached 0:00 but no exploding graphics or anything like that.

It was a modern service, lots of youth participation and songs.

Then there was the sermon.

Ummm, yeah.

All of the Good Friday services I've ever been to had a sermon that talked about the cruxifiction. This one was about how the world was filled bad things, like Hitler, because mankind didn't place all of their faith in God. And the pastor tried to show this using a cut up piece of paper but he didn't have enough sticky tack so the bulletin board looked funny and he needed help holding up the paper. And that all the people who didn't place all their faith in God were going to hell. And yes, he spelled "hell" using the pieces of paper. Both Jerry and I were rather confused what he was talking about since he rambled off on these odd tangents and nothing really made sense.

Things went back to normal with a hymn.

Then communion came along.

I suspect this sect of Christianity places a strong emphasis on communion and the affirmation of "accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal saviour" (the phrase was repeated numerous times in both the sermon and communion". So a couple weird things came next.

The communion came from a fountain (yep - I thought that was cool). But, it was one of those glowing fountains you see at weddings. So, when they turned it on, it glowed blue and purple before the grape juice started flowing out.

And then the oddest invitation for communion I have ever heard.

1. Everyone who had accepted Jesus into their heart was welcome to take communion
2. Everyone who hadn't shouldn't take communion because they'll be taking all the sins of the world and putting it on themselves.
3. So, if you weren't ready, nobody would judge them (as the minister scans the congregation)
4. And then the first 2 steps were repeated a couple more times
5. And then a moment of prayer, for those people who hadn't accepted him yet. That way they could do it in prayer and then take communion.

So Jerry and I look at each other and try to figure out if we were allowed to take communion. Since both of us had been confirmed in churches, we figured it would be ok.

And then the service had a perfectly normal ending.

And they didn't charge us for the grape juice or bread.

And we escaped as quickly as possible.