On the flight to DC this week, I wrapped up reading Churched: One Kid's Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess. I had been reading it on and off for the last couple of weeks, and took advantage of the couple hours' flight to wrap it up.

In short: it's a hilarious autobiographical comedy about a boy (the author) growing up in a family that shops for the "right" church, and then lives, eats, and breathes the experience of their church life & community.

His tales of Sunday school, of the things he witnesses around the church, the impact of the faith on his parents and siblings, of going to his church's school, and the like were easy to relate to, having been raised in a Catholic school myself, but also kept me in stitches. Hardly a paragraph went by without a good hearty laugh or at least a little chuckle.

At the end, there's a short turn toward the "preachy." It's only a couple of pages, and it's not the kind of preachy that tells you you're going to H3ll, but it stands out. You can skip it if you like, or you can read it. He actually makes some really good observations and points about "church."

It was neat to me that in one story in the book - in which he and classmates are sent out in a neighborhood in teams with the goal of winning a prize by "winning" the most souls for Christ - it was in the house of "the Catholic lady with Mary in her front yard" that Matthew seems to learn the most outright lesson of God's compassion and love in the whole story.

I was looking for a break from the non-fiction that typically plagues my reading "to do" list. This was a good, funny choice. I give it two thumbs up. Check out Churched: One Kid's Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess.