Seemed like a fine time was had by all last night at our Methodist Men’s Valentine’s dinner. Theme of the night: “We just wanted you ladies to know we can cook more than breakfast” (since our regular monthly meeting is a breakfast gathering before church). A few of the guys managed to keep the event a secret (I wonder how much lying was done in the name of keeping a secret about a church event 
) others of us knew better than to try. The knives were laid out nicely, the cutout hearts had a certain artistic randomness about their distribution on the tables, and the plastic wrap keeping the bread bowls fresh looked almost professionally applied, if I do say so, myself. I think that was a much better contribution than if I had actually tried to do any of the cooking.
Staying on the church theme, we’ve got a great group in our “20s and 30s” Sunday School class (yes, I know, I’m technically too old, but who’s counting?). I still don’t know everyone’s name, since we’ve added a few new couples in the past month (need to make a cheat sheet that I can keep in my Bible or lesson book), but it seems like we’re meshing well. We’re also approaching our current study in a different way than in any other Sunday School class I’ve been in (granted, the last time I regularly attended Sunday School was more than 20 years ago, in high school): we’re sharing the “teaching” duties. It’s really more of a facilitating role than teaching, and it seems to be working really well. The everlovely Mrs. and I took our turn last week. It was kind of neat to have the “teacher’s edition” of the lesson book; kind of felt like we were privy to some top secret information that everybody else didn’t have.
But I think what’s really different and really neat about this class is that it’s more of an interactive time, instead of just sitting passively while the teacher does all the work. I know it’s not exactly the same thing, but I feel like we’re getting some of the benefits of what Steve Sensenig points to in his post about “simple church.” I’m not necessarily all that interested in simple church for myself–I feel like I’m getting a lot from the “institutional church” approach–but I do like the group dynamic when we start discussing/ talking/questioning/answering/pontificating. OK, so maybe I’m the only one who falls into that last “_ing,” as if I have some special theological insight because I read a bunch of religion-oriented blogs (some of which are linked over on the right side of this page). Anyway, it’s a great group of people, and I feel like we’re really blessed to have all ended up at this church, in this class, at this time. </sappiness>
