Starless and Bible Belt

So yesterday I went on one of my occasional pilgrimages out to Melbourne's Bible Belt to see my wonderful friend Sharon. The occasion yesterday was a fundraiser for the Youth Dimension Coffee Shop she is leading in Millicent, SA. And it was quite a fun afternoon, really. The weather was beautiful, and the main entertainment of the afternoon was the band, San Salvador, playing in what is known as the Factory at Mitcham Baptist Church, a kind of industrial storage space with basketball court and lots of packaging lying around the place. We all sat on couches while San Salvador played, and I was pleased by the generally relaxed, cool vibe of the afternoon. The band were also pretty good. If you've ever thought, as I often do, that there just aren't enough art punk/ska-core songs inspired by "Moby-Dick", well, check out San Salvador's MySpace and you will be pleased to find that there's at least one more now.

There were also a few talks along the lines of "why you should come to Coffee Shop", and I surprised myself by, for the first time in four years, considering potentially going. I was partly excited to hear of the existence of a new shop in Jindabyne, which sounds like a pretty cool place (and I liked the film). And I've also started to remember everything that I liked about the two shops that I did in my first couple of years living in Melbourne. And yet part of me feels quite uncertain about the prospect of going along and being the only Anglican from the Northern Suburbs - in short, feeling even more the odd one out than I felt last time I went.

That being said, I've grown up a lot since my last shop, and am much more secure in myself. Nevertheless, my most recent experience of going to a church in the 'Burbs was surprisingly discouraging - mostly because I was reminded, yet again, of how little I could ever fit into a church where paintball and sport were the two things that brought men together. My memories of shop are of a similar kind of culture, one that I'm a bit scared of, to be honest. Because no-one likes feeling left out, but you get sick of trying your hardest to fit the mould when you suspect most other people there were just born loving paintball and saying "Awesome" lots.

Each shop, I've grown to love everyone on the team, and come to respect them for who they are. And I suspect they've come to feel the same way about me. And yet, five years after I first went on a shop, I now have a grand total of one close friend from either of my two shop teams. The impact that each shop had on me spiritually has gone nowhere. But the community? It still seems to be alive and well. I'm just not in it.

I'll pray about whether to go on shop this year. Maybe it'll be a chance to overcome some of the baggage of the past. Or maybe it'll just remind me that, while the gospel isn't bound by culture, a few too many of its followers are. I really hope it could be the former, not the latter.