(Blogger’s note: my apologies for not posting this yesterday – I got distracted by a silly little football game and lost track of time. My promise that it won’t happen again … at least not for the next six months.)
I was in an interesting position for a few days regarding the next destination on my Congregational Journey. Namely, I didn’t have a destination – the congregation I was planning to visit no longer existed. So clearly that wasn’t going to work. But one of my readers mentioned in a reply to a previous entry that they attended Quail Lakes Baptist Church, and that I might want to check it out. Well … my Sunday morning was suddenly free, so why not?
Quail Lakes Baptist is the second-largest Protestant congregation in Stockton, with an average weekly attendance (including kids) of about 2000, and a complex of three buildings – a sanctuary that I think seats over 1000, a two-story “activity center” that includes a gymnasium, and a three-story education building. It’s not quite a “mega-church,” but I guess it would be in the next tier, and it enjoys a good reputation in the city. It’s also a congregation I’m somewhat familiar with, having attended concerts there and taken an anger management course they sponsored several years back. I’ve heard their pastor, Mark Maffucci, speak on the radio a couple of times. I even lived in the apartment complex across the street from their buildings for a while, and was a member of another congregation that meets just a block down the road. But as fate would have it, until yesterday I had never been to a Sunday service at Quail Lakes Baptist.
And after yesterday, I probably won’t do it again.
Posted by Ray Anselmo 
Ray Anselmo, Professional Outsider 