Rituals

I've never found a connection with God through rituals.  This was an overwhelming theme in my mind during church at ULC today.

* Constructed Choral Responses feel so hollow to me

* I feel like Creeds are far more focused on institutional religion than spirituality with God
- Adam, Chris and I noticed today that even though they changed the Apostle's Creed from "Holy Catholic Church" to "Holy Christian Church," they left in the the next line about "communion of saints" (which is a very Catholic belief).  Any ideas as to why that is?

* One ritual that I do feel some sort of connection with is communion.  But I noticed in the bulletin today that ULC  believes in the "real presence" of the body and blood - whereas I've always interpreted it as a symbolic practice.  What's your take?


Adam and I are very excited to be moving back to the Ann Arbor area in the fall - even more exciting news is that our favorite church, Resurrection Life, is starting an affiliate church in A2.  I'd really like for us to get involved in helping it get off the ground - maybe it could be our future home church :-)

In the meantime...

While we figure out what we want to be our main focus to be, I thought I'd introduce a little side conversation to get us in the right frame of mind.  I've been trying to stick to my goal of daily bible reading, I have not successfully completed my One Year plan from last year - but I'm still chipping away at it :-)  So, I thought an appropriate conversation would be:

Bible = infallible word of God or powerful work of man inspired by God?