Buffalo Church of Dudeism

[JoeyJoeJoe]

Our first church service is in the books! We had a total of 5 of us for our first crack at this whole ‘formal’ thing. Here’s how it went down.

• Started with a little welcome.
• We had a guest who has never seen TBL or heard of Dudeism before
  • I’m performing her wedding ceremony next year so she wanted to come check it out
• I did a quick little overview of what Dudeism is and did some basic FAQs
• Opened it up to some Q&A and spent about 10 mins answering questions
• Dude John took over and did a reading from The Abide Guide
  • The 2nd Spiritual Law of Taking it Easy “Making it to Practice”
  • He then gave some personal examples
• This lead into the bowling/open forum discussion.
  • We talked about the topic of the day and how to incorporate it into our daily lives
  • Also about how this applies to many aspects of life
  • We discussed how we came to Dudeism
  • Had more general Dudeism chat
• Most importantly: we went out and achieved!

Our format is going to morph and evolve each time we hold services. We don’t want to get too uptight with our thinking.

First mistake from this week:

• We got a lane first, then started the services.
• We had to keep interrupting the service to make sure our lanes didn’t shut off.

Solution:

• Start in the Bar, regardless of how busy the bowling alley is.
• Our local lanes has a cheap night Monday/Thursday. $1 games after 9pm.
  It would make sense to hold services at 8:30 so we can have that 1/2 hour to hold services before the lanes open up.

Second Mistake:

• Holding Q&A before the actual service

Solution:

• Have the guest be like a child who has wandered into the middle of a movie.
• Then hold Q&A during the open forum chat. (Either John or I can take the time to answer questions while the other is facilitating the main chat)

 

That’s really the only issues we found from this first attempt at church! It went smoothly and we have started our little congregation. We have created a Facebook Group so members can know when and where the next services will be held. The goal is 2 a month on differing days. We did a Sunday so the next will probably be a Thursday or Monday.

[Dean Duder]

Hey this is great stuff! Did you take any photos?

[JoeyJoeJoe]

Unfortunately, I’m terrible at remembering to take photos. I’ll see if anyone happened to snap a few pics!

[JoeyJoeJoe]

Nope, no pictures. I’ll make sure and grab at least a group shot at the next one!

We started a facebook group for the Church so people can know when and where services will be held next.

 

[JasonTheK1d]

This is cool JoeyJoeJoe! I’m in Buffalo too, what’s the name of the Facebook Group?

[JoeyJoeJoe]

[quote quote=29924]This is cool JoeyJoeJoe! I’m in Buffalo too, what’s the name of the Facebook Group?

[/quote]

It’s: Buffalo Church of Dudeism (another post with a link is currently awaiting moderation)

[JoeyJoeJoe]

[quote quote=29924]This is cool JoeyJoeJoe! I’m in Buffalo too, what’s the name of the Facebook Group?

[/quote]

Buffalo Church of Dudeism.

 

 

[JoeyJoeJoe]

We are holding our second church service tonight! Tonight’s topic is “going with the flow” We will be talking about the ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’ idea from ‘The Dude and the Zen Master’ and how sometimes you just need to say, “Fuck It” and let shit go. Whether that be leaving certain people behind or switching career paths or just walking away from a situation.

I’m hoping for some really great conversations tonight. We are expecting between 7 and 9 folks in total.

 

Keep Abiding,

Joe

[Abidingly]

Thanks for posting this man.

I love that you have such a loose and evolving structure for each service.

How did the last service go?

I would totally be down for something like this in my area but I am pretty sure there aren’t enough dudes locally here. Maybe someday. I appreciate you posting your model of what a Dudeist service could look like.

If I’m ever out that way I may check if you still have something going.

[JoeyJoeJoe]

Our last service was a small turnout, only 4 of us in total. We had 7 RSVP and 2 maybes. I figured we wouldn’t have everyone there since our demographic is a little lazy…We ended up talking about TBL and Dudeism in general.

We have a member of our congregation who had never seen TBL before. She had just watched it before the last church service and we answered questions she had regarding the movie. It’s interesting seeing her point of view. She found the movie through the religion which is just mind-boggling to me.

Our next service is more of a “Get to know Dudeism” event. I’m hosting this one at my place (in the backyard weather permitting) and it’s going to be a mini service followed by Wii Bowling and probably a campfire with s’mores. I’ll be providing the fixins for caucasians and some snacks. We have 6 folks who have RSVP’d and I’m hoping to get some +1s there as well. It’s planned for just an hour and half.

Our Facebook group just added a new member! We are up to 9 in total!

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