The Varieties of Religious Experience

Yesterday I was doing what I usually do on a Saturday, spending a few hours at a cafe getting ahead of the week's schoolwork. Actually, in this case I was researching for my thesis instead of grading papers or other school stuff. The preacher of a local megachurch came in and sat down. At first I was a little flustered--it felt like a celebrity sighting. Then I thought about how wrong that is, to me: pastors shouldn't feel like celebrities to us. I took great comfort in knowing that if any of the pastors at the (non-mega) church I attend now had come in, they almost surely would have recognized me and probably come over to speak. Then I felt bewildered at how different people are. Clearly, the man I saw has touched many lives. His church is blessed and not just growing but booming, so for lots and lots of people, it doesn't matter that their pastor doesn't know them. But for me, that was a big part of why I stopped going to his church. Good preaching, cool music, but the dude couldn't pick me out of a lineup, and the people whose hands I shook during the one-minute greeting time were people I would never see again. That bothered me. And now I am blessed to be in a church where lots of people remember my name (even if I still can't keep theirs straight), where the preaching actually remains in my head after it's over, and where there are numerous low-pressure opportunities to serve or study outside services. And seeing that other preacher made me much more aware of it and grateful for it. So even if I hadn't gotten any work done at the cafe, it still would have been a good and productive Saturday.