So, I'm bored and have about an hour to burn before I have another class. I can tell you already that I'm hooked on this Mini. I managed to figure out how to access student wireless (which is a neat, funky encryption that only allows students to access it), so I was getting everything set up while I was watching a computer history video... Which pretty much covered what I already knew.

And then there was Chapel. Apparently, they're doing something called "Summit", which apparently means "free concert week". I mean, Chapel has always served me as little more than "things can be worse than my own church", but this is full-fledged showing off. Light show, multiple TV, elevated drummer... The works. The "pastor" got up after the music and went into a thing about getting our hearts ready for the message, but it turned more into an explanation and warning about how if we're here for the music, then we're not doing what we're suppose to. "We" being those of us in the audience. It was about 5 minutes of prattling on about how they're not up there to show off and how we shouldn't pay attention to it, and I'm sitting there thinking "well, if your music wasn't designed to be spectacle of light and sound for our enjoyment and more like the classic hymns of reverence, you wouldn't have to spend all this time making sure we're not acting improperly".

Also, the same guy mentioned that he was disappointed in the lack of college student programs at churches, and some in the audience agreed. Once again, it got me thinking... WHY do we need special programs? More excuses to segregate us into peer groups without mentoring or guidance from adults? By the time you graduate high school, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're perfectly capable of sitting up with the adults in "real" service. They're going to get so many special worship programs catering to all these spoiled youths that when they take over the churches, there's not going to BE a main service anymore, it's all going to be specialized for each age to keep them interested...

The hilarious thing is that this guy went on to say that we were going to inheret the church and be the future of it, and we need to learn the right stuff. Right... By exchanging immature ideas off our own peers for the rest of time? What good is it to have a discussion group with your own age in an effort to grow? He kept saying that we're at an incredibly impressionable age in college, and what we experience here will craft our lives from this point on. Great, so we're going to get ideas from other students and young youth ministers and get no training and knowledge from our parents or grandparents in the church?

No wonder churches are dying.