It's a non denominational church that holds its services in a small storefront church. It's very close to where we live and work so we've never gone to a service. When you drive by you would never know that they have nude services from the front. It looks like a typical storefront church.
I did always wonder if during Easter they did the stations of the cross or a passion play. That would be very interesting indeed. Loincloths not necessary...
We have been to nudist resorts and camps and several of them do offer nude religious services throughout the year. They are mostly very vanilla and family oriented. They are easy to find throughout the US.
We took the plunge and attended two of the nude services at the storefront church I talked about in early posts in the thread. It was interesting to say the least.
When we arrived, we approached the front door and it was locked and my husband thought we should leave, but I quickly rang the doorbell as my husband was about to walk away. A middle-aged woman answered the door with a big smile, wearing a robe and greeted us… "Hi, are you here for the service?" We responded that we were, and she made sure that we were aware it was a nude service. What was interesting is she went on to say that it wasn't clothing optional, and that nudity was required. We told her we were nudists and completely fine with that.
She invited us in and we walked around a wall and into the church which was a small store converted into a church, which is not that uncommon where we live. As soon as we got around the wall, she removed her robe and we could see that there were 6 or 7 other nude people mingling about chatting and they were all quite friendly and greeted us as we walked in.
The woman brought us down to the basement...yes, the basement, and told us we could undress there. There were no lockers, just hooks on the wall and some hangers on a coat rack. She assured us everything would be fine there, but if we wanted, she would give us a small box for valuables that we could bring upstairs. We looked at each other and my husband replied that it the box wouldn’t be necessary.
She left us alone to undress and told us to come upstairs when we were ready. My Husband and I undressed and went back up the stairs that we just came down and the pastor’s wife once again greeted us and introduced us to everyone. She informed us that the pastor was preparing for the service and it would begin shortly.
It was a small place with the alter in the front and about 40 metal fold up chairs. The cross was a plain wooden cross directly behind the altar and we were kind of disappointed, especially with the cross. I don't know why. I guess we were expecting a more artistic crucifix with a body. The service took place and was unremarkable other than the pastor quoting several passages from the bible about nudity including the fact that Jesus was crucified naked.
After the service, which was only attended by about 10 people, including us, everyone returned down to the basement where they had some coffee and pastries set up for what they called “fellowship”. It was friendly and nice, and we enjoyed the fellowship after the service
We did return for a second service the following week and during fellowship, my husband and I did get into a conversation with a few of the people there about crucifixion and the whole Roman crucifixion process, which interestingly, was brought up by someone else. It was quite interesting!
More to come…