Working its way to the top of my to-do list is: Go church shopping.
I’m going to visit some Schenectady congregations on Sundays and find out what they’re like.
The Pew Forum for Religion & Public Life, in a survey of 35,000 people, found that 28 percent of adults in the United States no longer are part of the faith into which they were born. And if you count people who changed denominations — like from Presbyterian to Methodist — it’s 44 percent.
I am among the latter. I was raised in one church but drifted away from it in young adulthood. I joined another denomination when my children were young because I wanted them to have a connection with religion.
When they reached adulthood, they decided for themselves whether to stay connected with the church they grew up in, find a different church or be “unchurched.”
What I miss about belonging to a church isn’t the rituals or the sermonizing. It’s the music (or at least some of it), the fellowship and the good works that most churches do in their communities.
So I plan to shop around — you’d be surprised how many people do that — until I find a church and congregation that are a good fit.
Perhaps you have some recommendations you’d like to pass along.
I do have some basic requirements.
Interesting sermons, please, leavened with a little humor. My attention span is short, and I can sleep at home.
I like a church that is active in community causes.
A good choir is a draw. Some new hymns along with the traditional, please. There is some beautiful music being written for contemporary services. Let’s hear some of it.
Don’t ask me on my first visit if I want to teach Sunday school.
A coffee hour after service is always a good idea. It’s how you get to meet the people who are the church. It’s also where you find out if their cookies are any good.
I like churches that do fundraising dinners. I’ve spent many an hour in church kitchens helping to prepare dinners for the public.
An urban church in an old and architecturally interesting building is more likely to entice me than an ultra-modern cube in the suburbs.
I like a welcoming congregation that is diverse and inclusive.
As for regimen, I like the unwritten Protestant tradition, which is to say, summers off with a big Homecoming Sunday in the fall.
AN AWESOME SIGHT
I wrote in a column on our Web site the other day about the right whale skeleton on display at the Museum of the Earth on the outskirts of Ithaca.
The museum, which is affiliated with Cornell University, is operated by the Paleontological Research Institution. As impressive as its right whale is, it’s not necessarily the jewel in the crown.
That distinction belongs to the Hyde Park Mastodon, whose bones were discovered in August 1999 by the Lozier family, who had hired an excavator to deepen the pond in their backyard in Dutchess County.
After the work was done, they noticed a log lying beside the road. But it wasn’t a log. It was a mastodon leg bone.
The reconstructed mastodon is awesome to behold, and it alone is well worth the trek to Ithaca.
Irv Dean is the Gazette's city editor. E-mail him at dean@dailygazette.com.
