My Churches: Community Church

One important place for me growing up was a community church along the edge of town. It's probably the church I've spent the most time at. Because of the building's blue roof, you would sometimes hear someone say "Thhhere's the church" (Haley's the one I remember most) when we could first see it as we were driving up to it.

When we started going, the church met at a school. Been a while but I think it's this one because Haley used to call it The Eagle Church. (Coincidentally, Eldorado is also the name of my favorite Edgar Allen Poe poem.)

My first day I was seven-and-a-half years old. The "and-a" was important to me before a certain age, probably 12. Can't find it but somewhere I thought I had a birthday card that called me twelve-teen. (I was in a hurry to get to my teens.) My grandmother Judy has said that when we were younger Andrew and I were like little men.

Our first day was in Ms Vickie's class, who led children's church up until we left, when I was in my early teens. We could get noisy but she knew how to get us to settle down, and I don't remember her raising her voice that much. (Quite a feat!) Except maybe when we were at summer camp, but nobody has a voice after that!😂 Seems like she had a pretty sharp whistle though. To help keep us settled down, there were puppet shows and a box of candies after the class for good listeners, attentive students, etc.

Her son, who was about my age, was welcoming to us on our first day. (Later, the four of us Godfrey kids would all take piano from his teacher Mary.) He played football and, when we returned to the church shortly before we moved to VA, was fantastic at card tricks. He had one where he would scatter a bunch in the air and pluck your card out that was very impressive!

There was a raised grassy area in a courtyard I remember playing a part when the church hosted an egg hunt at the school one Easter Sunday. Seems like one St Patrick's day we looked for clovers in it. It was close to where we parked, which was alongside a slope that led down to a sports field.

Sometimes we would go to the auditorium for Sunday morning services with the adults, and worship with the pastor who played the electric guitar, which was exciting for us kids! Seems like there was a call and response: “God is good?” “All the time!” “All the time?” “God is good!”

We were there for the groundbreaking of the new building. Think it happened before any construction, with booths and tables of food to celebrate. '97 sounds about right.

The church excelled at fellowship and community, and we started attending more activities. On Sunday nights Mom would teach Junior Bible Quiz. (Elementary school kids responding with known answers to questions in a competition.) One time she had a poster for charting progress. I had miniatures of Jeff Gordon’s cars as tokens, which might be why I used to get NASCAR stuff as gifts. (Still need to watch a race! Played NASCAR video games though.) Dad would teach Teen Bible Quiz for high schoolers. (Same idea as JBQ but teens would memorize Bible book(s) to answer freeform questions.) 

Royal Rangers and Missionettes (A/G Boy and Girl Scout-esque clubs) met on Wednesday nights. We would get merit badges for developing our personal and spiritual lives, learn military procedures like saluting and standing at attention, while also learning survival skills like how to make fires and lash together structures. (We made a showboat one year, I think.) In RR’s Frontiersmen Camping Fellowship, I was named Bookworm and Matthew was Churchmouse.

I haven't even begun to list the great people (friends, teachers, positive influences) I met or memories I made there. I have been very fortunate to have had a place like this in my life!

My Churches: Grandmother's Church

Before starting school I went to church almost every Sunday. (I continued to go to church until I got my degree, but I wasn't as regular.) When I graduated and worked for a while, I realized I didn't know many people my age outside the office. Naturally, church was the first place I thought to look. I tried some here and there, and a few years ago I started attending my grandmother Judy's church.

She's a longtime member, having church directories going back to the 90s and early 00s and at one point she'd said she worked in the church office. The previous pastor had ministered there almost that whole time. His children, Grandmother Judy has noted, were a good conversation topic since they are around our ages and were also being homeschooled when we were. Not long before the pandemic he retired and moved back to his home state. After some time searching, the church found a new pastor, whose sermons I've watched online and thought were also very good. Today is the first time since the pandemic that I attended in-person. (I also helped "put away" the greens, if that's an appropriate counterpart to hanging of the greens.)

The building isn't far from their house, where they've lived since about the 80s when my Mom and her brother Joel were finishing high school and entering college. (I've walked the distance before.) In the front is a statue of Jesus, encircled by a patio of bricks with the names of parishioners, many of whom continue to attend services there. In the back is a bell tower, which tolls hymns after services and carols in the Christmas season. The congregation is generous, active in church events as well as local and global missions, and very knowledgeable about biblical matters.

I don't know how many services I'd attended before I went regularly, although one day as a teenager I remember because I have the birthday card!

I like the artwork on this card because it reminds me of:

1. The work by artist Robert Gonsalves
2. Wreck of the Zephyr. Don't remember the occasion, but I stayed the night at her place when I was younger and she read that book. May still be in her collection.

That year we went to see a play at a local theater. (My brother Andrew and I were born two years apart, but our birthdays are the same week. It wasn't unusual for us to celebrate our birthdays together, and this year may have been like that too.) Gilbert & Sullivan are family favorites. The Pirates of Penzance with Kevin Kline, Angela Lansbury, and Linda Ronstadt is very good if you haven't seen it!

The church's denomination is Nazarene. While my upbringing was technically Assemblies of God (A/G), the churches we went to were probably more non-denominational. I haven't noticed very many doctrinal differences from how I was raised, and there's even some overlap through the Jeopardy!-esque Bible Quiz ministry, which was Dad's calling in A/G. (Although A/G typically has hand buzzers, while Nazarenes use jump seats, which I still haven't seen in action yet!)

The church building also doubled as a headquarters for a Civil Air Patrol squadron, which is how I got involved. (Coincidentally, a friend I'd homeschooled with since before our co-op days married the granddaughter of one of the squadron's senior members!) The gym came in very useful for the Physical Training tests, especially in winter! Think I'd like to work my way up to trying CAP again sometime. (Want to cut my teeth on other volunteer opportunities first!)

About the time I was in CAP I realized how much of an influence Grandmother Judy has had on my life. At that time I was going to the same church as her, and got into CAP through one of her friends. I was and am in a similar line of work, a defense contractor when she'd worked on KAFB. (Dad was on KAFB too, but she'd recognized a name or two of people/places I've worked with over the years.) We drive the same type of car. Ford Fusion. Color, too, in a way. My current car is red -- although it's been called other colors like copper before -- and she used to own a red van. It was a Ford Aerostar, which she'd had about the same time Mom had a blue Aerostar when we were little. Used to drive everywhere in the blue one, but it eventually needed to spend a lot of time in the shop. I don't remember being in the red one a lot, except for a night when we went to see a barbershop quartet. And the trip to El Paso where we saw the mountain Grandmother Judy painted. (Only other thing I remember about that trip is seeing Wizard of Oz at Granny's.)

In this picture from Christmas 2014, I'm with my cousins and younger brother Matthew. The shirt I wore in it is one Grandmother Judy picked out. I wasn't sure about it at first, thought it was busy, but it turned out to be one of my favorites. (My Gabriel VST hoodie is from my grandfather Don, who used to work on cars. I've worn it a lot, but I don't actually know that much about cars.)

The church, the clothes (I have a similar build to my grandfather and have been wearing a lot of his hand-me-downs), the clubs, the cars (my grandfather Don helped me choose my first one), and the job have all been great! But this year I'd like to change things up a little and start figuring out what my own style is. 🤔