Jonah gets in the car Monday after school and begins telling us that we went to an assembly at school where a guy and girl bent steel pipes and broke baseball bats.

I immediately remembered seeing signs for the Next Generation Power Force Team at New Life Church just down the road from Bethel, but didn't think much of it.

Once we get home, Jonah finds a "free admission" coupon in his backpack and is begging me to go. I'll be honest, I did not want to go. Mostly because I didn't want to leave the house, but I also because I figured it would be ridiculous.

But Jonah wanted to see it and I'll never pass up the chance to get a look at somebody's church facility. (I'm weird like that.) Below is a list of observations from my night.

• New Life has a pretty cool sanctuary. I liked it. Nothing too fancy, but nicely put together.
  
  
• The Power Force team stuff seemed a little blah. It seems strange that you could be so ho-hum about smashing 8 bricks with your head, but it came off a little "phoned-in."
  
  
• I heard one of the longest, most horrible altar calls in my life. Seriously...a 10 minute analogy about a worldwide virus. It was not cool. I'd tell you, but when I got home and told Kristen, she essentially told me to never repeat the story because it was so long and boring.
  
  
• There was a strange "separation of church and state" thing happening during the presentation. I think it's because these guys do a lot of stuff in public schools.
  
  
• Worst metaphor of the night, spoken from the stage: "Did you know there were 16 school shootings this year? We don't the blood of students running down our hallways...we need the blood of Jesus running down our hallways and delivering children from their sin." Kinda' weird.
  
  
• I will give props for racial diversity in the crowd. I think it was primarily a church crowd, but I enjoyed seeing so many groups represented in the congregation.
  
  
• Lots of "preacher voice." Lots.
  
  
• Jonah loved the strength stuff. The spiritual side gave us a good chance to talk about following God and allowed me to steer Jonah through what ended up being a pretty high-intensity emotional ending of the service.