sunday, kaleo style

on sunday i finally got up in time to make it to kaleo. eric and amy were there, so having someone i knew helped. the service was okay, about what i’d expect from newer, more recent incarnations of community churches.
the trend for new churches these days seems to be to shuck off some of the stuff that’s become the standard fare of nondenoms, and try to reach back into some of the history and depth of the church. a lot of it is sort of done without grounding in the actual church though, so it’s sort of sometimes a facade of depth (using iconography, rituals, etc).
kaleo was in the general current vein, though not quite as out there as some gen-x postmodern churches. but not as cheesy as a lot of contemporary non-denoms, and with a smattering of traditional touches in the service. the pastor was pretty young and seemed to a have a good relaxed, casual style for the service, with a message and delivery that tends to sit well with the gen-x/gen-y crowd. the church varies in size week to week, but was probably around 70 people or so (in the service) sunday. i thought the people who went there seemed agreeable, about the kind of people that would go to a more modern non-denom. one nice thing was there appeared to be a bit of age diversity, instead of everyone being in their early to mid 20’s. obviously this is all from just one visit, but it seems like a place i might be able to feel reasonably content in.
there were only a few times where i remembered that kaleo is meeting in the building that used to be the ymca where tamara worked for a good while. that made things somewhat awkward, thinking “hey, there’s the counter tamara sat behind every morning for months”, but fortunately i never really spent any time in the building back then so i can’t really tie specific memories involving her to the building other than dropping her off or picking her up a few times. someone told me that west u owns it and they are planning on tearing it down and doing something else with the land.
after the service, i went with the hartleys to lunch at jax’s grill. i’d heard of the place, and seen it, but never been there. the food was good. mason (their son) got to sit in my pickup after lunch for a few minutes, which i think satisified him enough since he couldn’t ride in it. he seems to be a sharp little kid, aware of what’s going on and what people are saying, and is able to string together ideas and concepts pretty well and argue a point he’s taken. he certainly talks and expresses himself like he’s thinking everything out very thoroughly before he speaks.