For the 10th year, Anchor offered a maze to trick-or-treaters. We used to create the maze in the basement. But the past two years, we cleared out the sanctuary and put the maze there. This year’s edition featured a huge black spider sprayed with neon colors that Terry Leatherman dropped on unsuspecting maze-goers. Not that it necessarily frightened them. I watched as a few people came through. One said, “That’s cool.” Not exactly what Shelob, with fangs gleaming, wants to hear. Terry told me one guy just said, “That’s lame.”

Pastor Tim stood outside the church, passing out candy and inviting people inside for the maze. As one middle school girl approached the church, Tim asked, “Are you Hannah Montana?”

She said, “No, I’m a pimp, and these”–pointing to two guys dressed as girls following behind her–“are my ho’s.” Yes, it takes me back to my own innocent days of…junior high?

I took a picture of all three in front of the church.

Downstairs, we had hotdogs and lots of crockpots filled with soup, plus various desserts. This is always quite popular, and it’s a good opportunity to get acquainted with neighborhood people.

My brother Rick says both of his kids won prizes at school for their creative attire. Cameron wanted to go as Jesus carrying the cross. “So we dressed him accordingly, complete with cross, blood, and crown of thorns.” How cool is that?

Then there’s the eight-grader in New Jersey who dressed like Jesus, and was sent home from school because it was causing a disruption. The kid wasn’t doing it as a religious statement, but because classmates had told him his long hair made him look like Jesus. So he decided to dress the part.

The Swerve blog, from Lifechurch.tv, has a piece on “The Numbness of Frequency,” by staffer Sam Roberts. Robert says that when you continually xpose people to the same thing in the same way, they become numb to it.

At work, I send email updates to our constituency on an as-needed basis–that is, whenever there’s somethign to tell them. I know that if I sent an email every Tuesday, week after week, they would become numb to it. “Oh, another email from Steve. Must be Tuesday.” I’ve sent emails on consecutive days, and I’ve gone three or four weeks without sending one. I don’t want to send emails just to send them. I want people to know that if I send something, it’s because there’s something worth reading.

Church services often follow the same predictable pattern. We do minor tweaks at Anchor, nothing drastic–just rearrange the same ol’ elements. But I think of some liturgical churches where the service order is firmly institutionalized. “Time for our second hymn. It must be 11:15.” I imagine it’s very easy to become numb in churches like that.

On the worship team, we can become numb to our own songs, doing them the same way every time. With one song this week, we tried changing the ending. In practice, we experimented with a progression of solos, but clearly saw a train wreck in the making, so we simplified it to a mere drumb solo. At least it was something different. People noticed.

Anchor people (l-r): Tim and Alice Bauman, Pat Minch, Joanna Jacobs, and Jennifer Kirchner.

On Saturday, Pam and I joined 17 others from Anchor in a Walk Thru the Bible seminar, Old Testament. I’d heard great things about these seminars for many years, but never had the chance to participate in one. It was well worth it. I learned a lot about how the Old Testament is put together.

Anchor co-sponsored the seminar with five other churches in our area code: Presbyterian, Mennonite, United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, and Church of Christ. North Highlands Church of Christ hosted the event. We did a joint Vacation Bible School the past two years, but attendance wasn’t all that great. So someone suggested doing a Walk Thru the Bible seminar together, with a kids’ track.

Pam on the left, Pastor Tim Hallman on the right, Tim and Alice Bauman in the middle.

We only had a dozen kids attend, and that doesn’t really surprise me. But there were 120 adults. They came not only from the six participating churches, but individuals from about a dozen other churches around the city who heard about the event. A number of them were from Lutheran churches, which intrigued me. Seems to be a lot of interest in the Bible in Lutheran churches. Or else there are just a bunch of Lutherans.

This Sunday, the churches are going together for a blood drive for the Red Cross. People can go to Grace Presbyterian to give blood. Unfortunately…Pam and I will be out of town. Shucks. I haven’t give blood since college, when there was plenty of peer pressure and peer pressure still mattered.

This morning Pastor Tim preached about the importance of church attendance, of not forsaking our gathering together. He used an illustration from his college days, when, after a lifetime of attending church every Sunday, he experimented with not going to church.

It reminded me of my own college days, and some minor hypocrisies which I, and others, engaged in. Back then (the mid-1970s), students dressed up for church. If you showed up for Sunday lunch at the dining hall, but weren’t dressed up, your fellow students would assume you skipped church. So, if we had, indeed skipped church, we might actually dress up just for lunch. How you dressed determined whether or not you attended church that morning.

That wouldn’t work anymore. Tim preached in bluejeans today. I frequently wear bluejeans as part of the worship team, and will probably wear shorts a few times this summer (if it ever warms up!). At Huntington University dining commons today, you probably couldn’t tell the difference between the students who did and didn’t attend church this morning. They were probably all wearing bluejeans.

I have no particular point to make. Just musing.