Suzy and I got up real early this morning to meet my mother in Silver Spring, MD congregation of the New Apostolic Church. I misjudged the time it took to get there because the last time I made the trip I was leaving from Catonsville and it was 45 minutes away from there. Suzy and I arrived around 15 minutes before the start of the service and my mom and her entourage about five minutes later.

A lot of the folks there hadn't seen me in several years and I mentioned that I had a house off of Perring Parkway and Taylor Avenue, "about seven blocks from the Baltimore congregation." I honestly wasn't trying to be snarky, just giving a useful landmark.

Everybody I talked to would then ask--in the manner of people who already know the answer--if that's where I was going. Three years ago I answered those questions in a various forms of a noncommittal maybe. This morning it was various forms of no and a hasty retreat out the front door.

I know from years of having been inside the church that it's uncouth to not make your best effort to attract the "inactives" back into the fold. I also know that some take it as a personal failure and source of sadness when they are unable to. Harsh as it may sound, I really don't consider their feelings to be my problem anymore.

It's a shame that in situations like these, rational discourse and faith don't get along, or I could just let everyone know that I make the rare appearance in church out of respect to my family and not because the spirit is drawing me back.

Afterwards we all watched a missionary video. Suffice to say my perception of the ickiness New Apostolic missionary work that goes on in South Africa was moderately reinforced by the quasi-propoganda DVD we sat through.

Having now seen churches where more than a wink and a nod is given to improving the situation of people in your own community, its hard to watch a bunch of American teenagers frolicking around the NAC-branded recreation center in South Africa in their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tee-shirts and feel any warmth to the effort.

Afterwards we went to Bennigans for dinner where we were regaled by stories of the Panama Canal and poisonous Gila Monsters by Gwen and Alan.

We left immediately up MD-28 to Burtonsville, MD for the Playa del Fuego Planning Meeting, where we settled on a 650 person ticket cap with 225 tickets being sold in the early bird queue. If you read my blog and will be buying tickets tomorrow, you now have advance notice.

The meeting was over pretty quickly, and we lounged at Suzy's place for a few minutes before heading up to the planning meeting for Red Emma's, which was like a version of the Playa del Fuego meeting with more hand gestures and a lot less digression. We have a lot of useful things that we may be bringing back to PDF planning, and hopefully we will both be added to the mailing lists soon.

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