Went to South Haven Baptist Church last Sunday to visit, and took Dad H. with me. The service was very good, the people were friendly without being pushy, and the pastor gave a sermon which Dad H. and I found very instructive ("How to Cope with Not Liking Yourself"). I still miss Liberty very badly, however. The singing was nowhere near as good, though you'd have to go a long way to find a worship director better than John Kilgore, anyway. I was singing these songs at South Haven, and there's nothing wrong with them, they're just harmless old-time Baptist hymns, but I started thinking about C.S. Lewis and his impatience with church music, and feeling that I could agree with him. One wants songs that don't lose their meaning after a few years, and don't invite one to mouth platitudes or fake feelings one doesn't have. I've found that the songs that wear the best are those that take their words from the Psalms, or other lyric parts of the Bible. My friend Rob says, "Isn't it great when you can sing theology?" -- meaning that worship is really easy when you are singing things you know to be true about God.

I don't think South Haven Baptist is quite up to having dramas, either. But it was a very sweet church and I'll probably go back to investigate the Sunday School. Sigh. Finding a church is a complicated business.