My house church

A friend of mine asked me recently to give more details about my house church. So here it goes -- house church. That word has so many meanings, but I think it fits. Basically we're a group of people who meet together in a living room on Saturday nights. The structure is pretty similar each night: 5 mins of opening prayer (in unison, ended by the pastor praying slightly louder than the others), two or three short songs (I've got about 10% of the words... but fortunately the song selection isn't so large), a short scripture reading (again in unison), and a 30-min sermon. We end with a short "altar-call" and offering. Then the hostess provides some kind of food (last saturday it was gigantic donuts; the other week it was tamales and coke). I enjoy it and like being stretched. I'm still working out the "why" I attend... perhaps equal-part community, biblical teaching (the pastor is theologically solid), cross-cultural experience, language practice, and probably several other reasons I've forgotten by now. Oh yea, if you didn't know or hadn't guessed by now, all of the house-church activities take place in Spanish. So that's my Saturday evening house church. I sure hope they decide to use the air conditioning next week!!