A secret translator......*a secret translator*

Today I visited a new church.

Cavalry Lutheran is a mega church outside of Minneapolis with three services on Sundays.
A 'classical' service early in the morning...
Two 'contemporary' services later in the morning...
And a 'modern' service in the evening.

Looking for young-uns with which to ingratiate myself, and for some rockin' tunes, I decided to attend the modern evening service.

Umm.....yeah.

The service was not in the huge main area, but in a smaller side chapel with a GORGEOUS stained glass window.

There was a small amount of people there (about 20 or 30?), and most of them older people or families.

The music was awesome.
Rockin'.
And it was all songs I knew (which was great!).
The vocalist had a fantastic voice and their arrangements were really interesting as well.
While I'm on the subject of church worship I would like to put the question into cyberspace....Why don't Minnesotans sing in church!?!?!??! There's always worship, and there's always projectors, why does everyone seem content to stand and WATCH the band rather than joining in?! That's why they have the words up there ya know!
Oy.

Anyway....Then came the message.
*giggle*
I say again, 'oy'.
The pastor was really cheesy and disengaged me almost right away.
He was like one of those really annoying pastors you see on tv on Sundays where they're always smiling but you don't know why and are sure they don't either.

The message was accompanied by a power point.
This week it was called 'igniting the fire', and was appropriately backlit by a picture of licking red flames.
....ok. Maybe not so appropriately. Not gonna lie, it looked a little like hell.
Woops.
The Pastor started out wanting to talk about 'the great commission', but ended up spending forty minutes giving us almost a word for word summary of a book he read this summer. A book which has nothing to do with the great commission.
.....yyyyeaaaaahh....

However, what really got to me was what I like to call the 'secret translator'.
The power point was set up to be a sort of 'echo' to everything the pastor was saying, sometimes to the letter.
(proof positive that this was a completly memorized message with ZERO improvistation what-so-ever).

The effect was that of having a translator sitting next to you whispering what the speaker is saying after they say it.

For example.
Imagine that in the following exchange, the red type is the pastor and the orange type is the powerpoint. Imagine that the powerpoint appears about one second after the pastor speaks.

This summer I read a book called 'Soul Obsession' by Nikki ........
'Soul Obsession' by Nikki ........

He was a man who grew up in Puerto Rico with his mother
Grew up in Puerto Rico with his mother

He was walking down the street when he heard music from a church and stepped in.
He found a church.

Hundreds of people showed up to pray for his mother.
Hundreds of people, praying for his mother.

He felt that God wanted him to forgive his mother.
God wants him to forgive his mother.

Seriously.
It was ridiculous.
I almost laughed out loud a few times.

Well.
In conclusion.....I love the music at this church, but the message at the Vinyard was FAR superior.
Pretty awesome as a matter of fact.

I don't know what I'm going to do next week.
I'm torn between checking out the contemporary service to see if it's any better, checking out one other church I was interested in, and going back to the Vinyard; where I don't know any of the songs and feel a little 'uncool', but the messages are fantastiche.

.....I dunno.
I guess we'll see.
Cheers.