This is part one of two episodes about our church experiences. In this episode we focus on children’s church, youth group, and church camp, and the next episode will be about church in the midst of the deconstruction and reconstruction of our faith (though in the next episode we’ll still have a few things from youth group and church camp to bring up, there’s so much to talk about!). We talk about the programming in children’s church (Veggie Tales, 3-2-1 Penguins, and the lesser known but honestly weirder set of DVDS called Kidmo), our trying to fit into our youth groups and church camps, and also about some of the shenanigans that went on there (lots of fun games and not-so-fun purity culture and worship leaders trying way too hard). Ultimately, although we had some fun times and we made some friends, our feelings re: our church upbringings are very complicated.
If anyone else in the world, like April, grew up watching Kidmo on Sundays in children's church, let us know! You can find a lot of clips from Kidmo on YouTube (though if you search for that word the first thing to come up are videos in Japanese; scroll down and you’ll get to things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inNlRKUx0Lk).
Our social media: @reclaimingthegarden on Insta, @RtGardenPodcast on Twitter. Our personal accounts: @thatpunchabletheaternerd, @April_TheWriter (April is on Twitter and Insta). Also, our podcast account follows a bunch of awesome folks + podcasts in the exvangelical/deconstruction world and progressive Christian world, so if you’re looking for more resources, that’s a great place to start!
