I didn't have anything planned for Monday or Tuesday, but in church on Sunday I noticed an announcement of a free training course on those two evenings in "Hermeneutics and Homiletics", and on a whim, at the last minute, I signed up.
The course amounted to two two-hour lectures in a classroom forming part of the church buildings. I learned some interesting things about hermeneutics (approaches to studying the bible) and homiletics (ways of teaching and preaching), but more interesting perhaps was what I learnt about the church itself and the people in it.
When I arrived on the Monday evening I met a few of the other twenty or so people on the course - a range of ages from retired to student. I got chatting to one lady and asked her why there were so many different churches along that particular road in Palo Alto. She said it was because people disagreed about theological issues, which I found both shocking and slightly worrying. My experience in England has tended to be that different churches in general (protestant ones at least) get along with each other reasonably well at a local level, seeing each other as valid alternative choices for people who prefer different styles, and that the Church of England in particular is deliberately (and famously) broad in its churchmanship, embracing a range of views and glossing over minor differences of opinion, notwithstanding the highly publicised antics of extremists of various persuasions who get far more media attention than they really should. I was suddenly struck by the fact that I had picked this church on the basis of little more than a well constructed website and a shared taste for Matt Redman songs, but had no idea what the party line was on any number of contentious theological issues, or indeed whether there was a party line. What would happen if I discovered that the church had official links to aggressive anti-gay activism or republican economics? Or (more importantly) if they discovered what I really think about the claims of Michelle Bachman to follow Christ, or that I had not only participated in a gay wedding as my brother's best man, but even broken every rule of the secular registry office by praying silently for the happy couple during the ceremony?
PCB stands for Peninsula Bible Church, so I was expecting them to be grounded pretty solidly in bible study. But I had never been on a course quite like this. It felt very much like a university lecture, and what was interesting was that nobody else seemed to think that was odd. The pastor/lecturer did almost all the talking for two hours, and the students asked questions expecting authoritative answers rather than to challenge or debate. Some people hardly spoke at all. The course is apparently run annually for church interns, who as far as I can tell are a mixture of volunteer staff members and other members of the congregation who sign up.
I found the lecture on the second night less helpful: the pastor rushed through a lot of printed material which I would need to read more carefully to follow properly, but he also was quite prescriptive as to how we should approach bible study or leading a group. I felt there was a presumption within the group that he had the authority to be this prescriptive, which raised my hackles slightly, although there was nothing he said that was at all objectionable in itself, and I warmed to him as a person. Perhaps I was out of line here, after all he is in charge of this church and I am effectively a guest in his house.
I suppose what seemed to be missing from my perspective was any emphasis on the supernatural element. The emphasis was on working through the bible in a scholarly, methodical fashion, which is good, and to be fair he was clear about the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding those who study the bible, but I haven't heard anybody at this church talk about miracles or the prophetic, or about ministering to one another in prayer. The section of the lecture on leading a Bible Study group was quite instructive, it seems that here the main purpose of small groups is study.
So what have we learned from this?
(1) You've probably learned that my posts aren't always light-hearted, but take courage and don't stop reading, I'm not planning a permanent change of tone and it's baseball on Thursday which I am assured will prove a rich seam of comedy nuggets.
(2) I've learned that PCB is not quite what I'm used to, but then again nothing round here is, so there is no point fretting, that's the adventure. I've met a lovely lady who helps with a church group for recovering addicts, and she's invited me to their worship session on Sunday morning: I guess that will show a completely different side to PCB. There's also a welcome lunch for new people on Sunday which should give me a clearer picture of what they're all about.
(3) I've also realized that at some point in the last few years I have become a charismatic. Who saw that coming?
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