First, the most winsome Christian on my teams in college attended Kenmore Alliance in Tonawanda. Funny that the negative connotation associated with Tonawanda makes the comparable Kenmore sound like a step up.

Me and some other Catholic teammates went with him one Sunday morning. His church sent a bus around. I’ve always been leery of churches that have their own fleet of buses. It’s just a hang-up of mine. I grew up believing that everyone walked to church. I certainly did, all the way through college.

The service at the C&MA church that morning was innocuous but not insipid, comprised of hymn singing and Scripture reading and testimonies. The band of us Catholics - safety in numbers - attended only once but, in return, Eric came to the Newman Center with us many, many times. We saw that as particularly gracious of him. And he was gracious. Want to make a Catholic happy? Accept their invitation to church. It’s a gesture not soon forgotten.

Then, there’s the Princeton Alliance Church in Plainsboro. Here again, the prestige of Princeton is preferred over the plainness of Plainsboro. I sit with the women at their Thursday morning Bible Study. I attended a Sat. evening service full of loud Christian rock music and youth-oriented preaching. My friend’s brother-in-law is the youth pastor there and runs that service. He’s a good guy, actually.

Google map of C&MA churches in the greater Buffalo area. Directory of C&MA churches in the Northeast.