A particularly narrow sect of the isLove meme

[rj_anderson]

plymouth brethren is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

Excuse me while I lie on the floor, kicking my heels and giggling madly.

On a mostly unrelated note, we have succeeded in moving all our possessions from our old house into our new, and I am still in a daze -- partly because of exhaustion, but also because the new place is just so nice and so big and I can't quite believe I actually live here. The first night in our new bedroom (a bonus room we built above the garage, with a high peaked ceiling) I said to my husband, "I feel like I'm sleeping in a cathedral."

The dining room is also humongous, and we actually have a spare bedroom for guests. So this also means that now we have absolutely no excuse not to be hospitable. I shall look forward to it, I think, once I've found a place for everything...

Comments

[the-gentleman.livejournal.com]

Urgh. Don't get me started on the Brethren... :(

[the-gentleman.livejournal.com]

That could be taken the wrong way. I don't mind the Open Brethren so much, but I do dislike a number of their teachings particularly on women. My girlfriend's family used to go to a Brethren church, and I attended once or twice, and, meh. Not my kind of thing at all.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about the "closed" or particularly the "exclusive" PBs, you have my sympathies. But those groups might as well be on the moon as far as they touch upon my personal experience in the "open" brethren, which has been largely positive...

[the-gentleman.livejournal.com]

As I said, that first statement came out a little harsh. I belong to a more liberal church, and even the Open Brethren can be a lot stricter than I feel is good for a church- particularly since it affected me and my girlfriend particularly, i.e. a very strong disapproval of even holding hands! And the format of the worship was very alien to me, coming from an Anglican background- the idea of a one hour discussion and Bible readings by the men only followed by an hour of the "actual" service felt deeply odd. Outside the church itself, though, they were pretty warm and friendly, especially on the youth work side of things.

[dr-c.livejournal.com]

Re. the holding-hands thing: In my experience (admittedly limited to Washington state and California), there's no overall consensus among Brethren churches on that; it will vary quite a bit from one congregation to another.

Note also that to most of us, the communion meeting is no less the "actual" service than the preaching meeting, and perhaps more so! But it's interesting to see it through the eyes of an outsider every now and then-- thanks.

I'm glad they were at least friendly-- I'd rather be viewed as a decent person with odd doctrines than the other way round!

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of the anti-holding-hands thing myself, though every congregation is likely to be different in that regard, as the PBs aren't a denomination per se (though they sometimes behave like one) and each congregation is independent. But otherwise, what dr_c said. :) Especially about the communion service, which is so fundamental a part of church life for me that I found myself missing it terribly when I attended a couple of churches that didn't have it.

[kerravonsen]

Oh, how interesting! I hadn't realized you were with the Brethren. When my grandmother became a Christian, she decided to go with the (open) Brethren, because they had solid teaching, so my mother was brought up in a Brethren church, but she didn't stay Brethren. Then again, our family is wildly multi-denominational; my father was brought up Methodist, and became an Anglican minister (but not of a parish), but which church we actually attended depended on where we were living; if the local Anglican wasn't up to scratch, we'd attend whichever church they felt was better, irrelevant of the denomination; for example when we lived in Berkeley we went to the First Presbyterian church (aka "First Pres").