the pastor is the type of "apolitical centrist" who so clearly agrees with Trumpian policy it hurts, says shit like "Men and women are created different, (male singer) and (female singer) have completely different voices that harmonize together!" His whole world would be rocked by discovering voice training lol. Worst of all are the occasional guest preachers, who say all the directly bigoted shit for him so he can keep his pure image. And all my mom's church friends believe in unhinged Facebook conspiracies about Michelle Obama being a trans woman and the moon landing being fake.

i hate that i find some of the boys around my age at church cute. like that happens less often than with girls why does it have to be the ones who want me dead 😭

there's a guy at church who's always covered in maga/thin blue line/american flag themed clothes and he looks EXACTLY like this mf from the polar express

theres also a lot of old ladies in really cute outfits. i wanna wear them all one day even though im a teenage trans girl and id look a century in the past

also there's this one guy who's an academic involved in geopolitics of some sort, my family used to go to small group at his house back when we both went to a different church before both leaving cause it went woke, lol

recently he's been getting really into demonology, and constantly asks the pastor to cast out all these demons that are apparently lurking in the sanctuary. it's funny to see the pastor listlessly waving his hands going through the motions as fast as possible

my church just used blatant ai art for an event announcement ew ew ewwww

during worship a guy's phone ringtone went off while they were doing that play-the-piano-while-saying-inspirational-stuff bullshit, and those corporate chimes fit PERFECTLY, like they were part of the band

going to my church really shows how voice is lowkey the most important thing for passing, i bet a solid 25% of women here would totally get accused of being trans satanists tryna infiltrate by these conservative ass mfs if their pitch and resonance was a bit more masculine, and if they spoke and carried themselves with less cisfidence

The christmas eve service is always this church's moment, wayyyyy more people come to it than every other service. my family actually first came to this church for the 2021 one i think, finding it boring and conservative enough for their tastes after being alienated by most other churches within workable distance being either too liberal, too corporate, or too qanon (this one has a surprising number of qanons too, not sure how aware of it my mom is, or if they only hold to the conspiracies she agrees with)

cause sooooo many people show up, the pastor always tries to be as big tent, bland, and inoffensive as possible. the sermons are always just fluffy kumbaya bullshit half the usual length to accommodate the cooked attention spans in the room. all the talk of giant anti-choice rallies the pastor has been to, the lgbt community being against god, and weird demonology happens on the days where the pews hold less asses. the church is a business and doesn't fully stand for their own shit

christmas eve service was same as expected, but it's funny to me how it always gets more oriented to all the little children, cause they're the toughest crowd there. the pastor spent almost the whole sermon straight up singing nursery rhymes

the people in charge of the projector at my family's church are bafflingly incompetent, like half the time at least they always mess some shit up with the lyrics or something

oh there's a lady i don't think i've seen before here who's as tall as me and has slightly cooler outfit than usual, sudden gender envy coming on

After the sermon, most people go into the fellowship hall and start talking. I don't believe any of them can actually hear each other cause of how much talking there is at once. It makes me want to die. They must be hallucinating the response they think they hear, responding to that, and watching their conversation partner do the same.

im so jealous of this one friend group of teenage girls here, fuck my shitty tranny life

as someone who's tasted cardboard, this church's communion wafers taste like cardboard

my parents went off on a back and forth rant about how both the sermon and worship, for a while now, has apparently been so riddled with theological problems that they're considering leaving us kids home from church. cause they don't think we're discerning enough to firmly tell that so much of it is an evil tool of satan. i hope this happens, would be a funny way to get out of church

soooo from 5 to 9 pm every day this week my whole family is going and operating part of the church as a place for homeless people to stay out of the insane unusual levels of cold that'll be happening and eat a while. my mom sort of strongarmed the church into letting her do it, one of those things my mom disliked about the church was that she felt their "community services and charity" were all nothing burgers that didn't take any real resources or effort and were more just promotional social gatherings

ive talked a lot about the horrible things my parents have done due to how true believer they are, but as what we're doing now demonstrates, at least that also means they aren't one dimensional villians at the end of the day

alright im back home from helping with that, it was... interesting. for starters, the church had a mlk day free clothing giveaway this morning and there was some thrift store truck that was supposed to come take the leftover shit away before we got there, but the church made some mistakes about when they'd be available and it was allllll still there, barely anyone had actually taken anything earlier.

so i copped a bunch of clothes for myself, i don't actually have that many and it makes my parents upset sometimes lol. actually got away with taking some femcoded stuff, though they called me out when i was going through the girl section and i had to play it jokingly. maybe ill sneak some of that next time...

also at first i was tryna take this ac/dc cap, even though i don't listen to them, but my dad spotted it and went off about how they're one of the most satanic bands there are (which makes me wanna check them out ngl, even though hes said the same things about coldplay lol) and threw it in the trash to keep any homeless people from touching it too. so i settled for a pi cap instead ^_^

another thing i forgot to mention, some people my mom's known for a long time, from back when she was some sort of social worker / volunteered for this one organization (idk this part of her past well), showed up. and they posted about what was happening on their facebooks, and so some of their friends showed up too. suprise, these people were from macedonia! the woman started crying when mom spoke her language and pointing to me telling her that i was born there, and they've invited us over for macedonian food as soon as possible. my parents are taking this event as a sign from god that they're doing the right thing.

lol the church people gave a weirdly broad thank you for this, my mom isnt registered with them even though we show up here every sunday so they gotta make sure some of the good optics go to them

our church's ever-rotating cast of worship singers generally interject random wannabe deep statements about God, and wannabe emotional stories about his works in their lives, into worship. and it's always very obviously inorganic yet treated as if it wasnt

but today, a lady who usually only shows up sometimes to play the piano sang one song after rambling about how she used to sing this song over and over to herself when she had a miscarriage 6 years ago and she was sorta tripping over herself as she talked and the singing was less polished and it all came off so distinctly sincere compared to how it's always been that it exposes the others for what they were, even as she was trying to do it in the way they did

my family walked out the church to the car rather than stopping and talking, and dad introduced us to this guy who was blatantly just finishing up vaping or doing some other sort of drug, going "this is Rico, he has a habit". and my younger brother went "there's a lotta people with habits here" and gestured at another dude who'd left the church to smoke, shit was close to comedy sketch timing, maybe i could workshop it into something im writing

my mom's autistic about jesus, that must be it. after the song i mentioned ended she was excitedly offering constructive critique of its theology to dad while doing stimmy little hand motions

i hate how this church adds pop choruses to century old hymns like if you want tradition commit to the bit you cultureless cumbubbles

how much hearing damage do i have from their dogshit audio mixing and absurdly high volume, the world will never know

today was one of those sermons where the pastor brought up the forces of evil and darkness every few seconds and offered to cast out demons from anybody who had them, got me feeling like im in the victorian era or some shit

my mom just randomly put both her whole hands on a black woman's hair, palms and all. classic mom!

my dad just randomly went "that guy has iii-ssues!" to me after interacting with a mentally disabled guy who visited church today, in the middle of the whole gathering crowd. classic dad!

btw, i ran into that same guy a short while later. he went "nice hair man, how long did you grow it?" and i replied "about 4 years." and he responded something like "sorry i talk so much, i cant stop talking to women im such a flirt, i do it so much im talking to guys who look like that too now"

lmaooooo turns out my mom invited that very same black woman and somebody else over to dinner, she said we were having guests, yeah thats it just keep cranking the awkwardness up

a cute little kid smiled at me from over his mom's shoulder in worship today 🥲

an underrated part of modern christianity's chokehold is that it's an excuse for dudes in conservative circles to express emotion. come to this church and you'll see dudes moved to tears at how god's protected and healed them and people they know as if it were a distant surrogate for openly showing any built up anxiety from what they experienced. you'll see dudes moved to tears at what god's done in their lives and in the church as if attributing the accomplishments of you and your team to him made it ok to be overwhelmed after hitting a milestone, kept it from being evil sinful pride

yall the way our pastor yells and moves at key moments of every sermon reminds me of the bit from toy story where woody goes "YOU, ARE, A, TOY!" soooo much