Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The “one” in Charlotte ONE, I discovered, actually stands for the total number of times I’m attending. The idea sounds great on paper, of course, and after discussing why I do and do not crave church community, one of my co-workers painted the event in broad strokes.

“There’s music, fellowship–” and then she bottom-lined it “–really hot girls.”

I’m glad I went, tried something new for a change, but the truth is “girls” described a good cut of the audience, many of whom were probably worrying about how best to prepare for that Intro to Macro midterm or something. The program itself felt geared toward college and, even though there were older 20-somethings to meet, that was the reason I vanished.

The band began well enough, but kicked into high emo gear within minutes when the lead singer, wracked by a kind of suburban passion, promptly delved into tortured introspection about sin and shortcoming, freely tossing out dark nouns such as “distress” before segueing to the speaker proper who, jokes aside, proffered more of the same.

“Shits, tits, I’m awesome, take a hit,” I jotted down on my welcome card.

These are the four cardinal sins reveled in this type of fellowship, where vulgarity, lust, pride, and drugs rotate under a ridiculous shower of warnings most dire. It’s a preoccupation with being bad, being oh so bad, but this is college, people, not a boarding platform for a nunnery.

I’m not throwing in the towel yet, though. It’s on to the next hotspot. I need to get to the bottom of this community thing.