[I'LL EDIT THIS PAGE FURTHER SOON BUT FOR NOW THE REDEEMER EPISCOPAL TEXT & THE MISSIO DEI PAGE ARE IDENTICAL]
If the main page confessional made you think the church really messed me up, keep in mind that the church I grew up with was filled with nice, kind people. They weren't bad people at all.
But... my psyche is battered and has been broken and torn to shreds over and over and my emotional state has always been a volatile one so that tints all of my experiences. I'm mentally ill and a sick, messed up person. That's more subdued now but it's still true and it is never going to really change as long as I'm stuck on this stupid dying planet.
Church of the Redeeemer Episcopal, in Houston, Texas, was a key player in the 1970s Jesus Movement. That movement was a sort of counter-countercultural movement. It was somewhere between a 'community' and a commune or cult movement in the case of Redeemer in the 60s-70s and that fanatical focus sort of unraveled and tapered down by the 1980s when I was a child growing up there. The Jesus movement was sort of a hippie Christianity and a rejection of things like the drug abuse and negative traits of the hippie movement and it also redirected that sort of idealism into a faith / spiritual direction that attempted to redefine and revitalize the Christian tradition by exploring more modern art, music, changes in worship to make everything far more emotive and expressive and alive. Worship at Redeemer was amazing at times. More so, apparently, before I arrived there.
I think the church was ten times bigger in my memories of childhood than school. My school {T.H. Rogers, a magnet school) was a great school but... I don't think the connections formed there had anywhere remotely near the depth or scope or number or duration of the friendships formed in the church. Certainly it didn't hurt that we lived three blocks from the church building in Eastwood, or that the scout troop I was involved in and reached Eagle rank in (Troop 4) met there as well.
Steve Capper was the pastor there early on when I was there. He was a good guy. He took over the position from prior church leaders, some of them embroiled in scandal. If you're wondering what ook place - in terms of spiritual activity and in terms of how it unraveled, read 'Days of Fire and Glory' by Julia Duin as it covers that church's state in the years before we joined.
While I was there as a child I didn't really get that past historical context. I did get that it was a big church with still about 250 people there and actively participating, and I got that it was slowly eroding and some people were gradually moving away. I also got that there were a lot of children there with me and that the presence of so many families meant that youth activities were more fun than they'd ordinarily be in a smaller church.
We had David Tenney as a youth leader very early on, among others... he's the father of six children and they all were there, they all were friends of mine and Claire was close to my sister Katie.
Otherwise, beyond myself, my two sisters [aka the three Hornbostel children] and six Tenneys, we had some other members, like Bradley Wallace (now a doctor) and Austin Carlson, Eileen Wallace, Johnmark Devlin, and Katie McGranahan and the Davises [Josh and Michael] and later also people like the Cour-Palais kids, Salvador Nava, Jason Lindsey, and others. Salvador is a neat case as he was in both the church and the scout troop.
Lucas Ellis was the youth pastor for a few years and then Mark Ball after that. Mark oversaw a group that was shifting into young adulthood by the time he was there, and in the end Mark would create his own church branch initially with 'Seek First' and then with Missio Dei - an entirely separate group meeting in a separate church building.
I continue to communicate [to varying degrees] with all these people and a number of others not named here. We are still a very interconnected group of friends.
Church programs included summer camps, La Roca (a more Spanish-language group), youth groups and big lock-in sleepovers at the church, Boy scout and cub scout programs, even Venturers (a girls' program on the edge of BSA scouting) and Sunday services, mission trips, Fall Festivals, etc. My dad Scott played trumpet with the worship team.
I also would make ridiculously silly videos with the friends there - all the way up to 2018. Much of that I hope to get sorted through and I'd like to have it ready to release on HornbostelVideos.com in the near future. But it accounts for a very large chunk of my video stuff up until recently.
I think my indie VFX-heavy comedic videos were usually either scouting humor [Troop 4 videos] or made with the Youth Group friends, or with extended family over Christmases. Every single one of these categories accounts for well over half a dozen different video projects. We'd throw different parties and play games and it was often not organized by the church, it was just us hanging out and doing silly or fun things.
There's more memory of the groups there than I can reasonably cover here. But it was a great stretch of time in many ways and I'd like to emphasize that my life is not always miserable as may have been indicated elsewhere on this site.
If the main page confessional made you think the church really messed me up, keep in mind that the church I grew up with was filled with nice, kind people. They weren't bad people at all.
But... my psyche is battered and has been broken and torn to shreds over and over and my emotional state has always been a volatile one so that tints all of my experiences. I'm mentally ill and a sick, messed up person. That's more subdued now but it's still true and it is never going to really change as long as I'm stuck on this stupid dying planet.
Church of the Redeeemer Episcopal, in Houston, Texas, was a key player in the 1970s Jesus Movement. That movement was a sort of counter-countercultural movement. It was somewhere between a 'community' and a commune or cult movement in the case of Redeemer in the 60s-70s and that fanatical focus sort of unraveled and tapered down by the 1980s when I was a child growing up there. The Jesus movement was sort of a hippie Christianity and a rejection of things like the drug abuse and negative traits of the hippie movement and it also redirected that sort of idealism into a faith / spiritual direction that attempted to redefine and revitalize the Christian tradition by exploring more modern art, music, changes in worship to make everything far more emotive and expressive and alive. Worship at Redeemer was amazing at times. More so, apparently, before I arrived there.
I think the church was ten times bigger in my memories of childhood than school. My school {T.H. Rogers, a magnet school) was a great school but... I don't think the connections formed there had anywhere remotely near the depth or scope or number or duration of the friendships formed in the church. Certainly it didn't hurt that we lived three blocks from the church building in Eastwood, or that the scout troop I was involved in and reached Eagle rank in (Troop 4) met there as well.
Steve Capper was the pastor there early on when I was there. He was a good guy. He took over the position from prior church leaders, some of them embroiled in scandal. If you're wondering what ook place - in terms of spiritual activity and in terms of how it unraveled, read 'Days of Fire and Glory' by Julia Duin as it covers that church's state in the years before we joined.
While I was there as a child I didn't really get that past historical context. I did get that it was a big church with still about 250 people there and actively participating, and I got that it was slowly eroding and some people were gradually moving away. I also got that there were a lot of children there with me and that the presence of so many families meant that youth activities were more fun than they'd ordinarily be in a smaller church.
We had David Tenney as a youth leader very early on, among others... he's the father of six children and they all were there, they all were friends of mine and Claire was close to my sister Katie.
Otherwise, beyond myself, my two sisters [aka the three Hornbostel children] and six Tenneys, we had some other members, like Bradley Wallace (now a doctor) and Austin Carlson, Eileen Wallace, Johnmark Devlin, and Katie McGranahan and the Davises [Josh and Michael] and later also people like the Cour-Palais kids, Salvador Nava, Jason Lindsey, and others. Salvador is a neat case as he was in both the church and the scout troop.
Lucas Ellis was the youth pastor for a few years and then Mark Ball after that. Mark oversaw a group that was shifting into young adulthood by the time he was there, and in the end Mark would create his own church branch initially with 'Seek First' and then with Missio Dei - an entirely separate group meeting in a separate church building.
I continue to communicate [to varying degrees] with all these people and a number of others not named here. We are still a very interconnected group of friends.
Church programs included summer camps, La Roca (a more Spanish-language group), youth groups and big lock-in sleepovers at the church, Boy scout and cub scout programs, even Venturers (a girls' program on the edge of BSA scouting) and Sunday services, mission trips, Fall Festivals, etc. My dad Scott played trumpet with the worship team.
I also would make ridiculously silly videos with the friends there - all the way up to 2018. Much of that I hope to get sorted through and I'd like to have it ready to release on HornbostelVideos.com in the near future. But it accounts for a very large chunk of my video stuff up until recently.
I think my indie VFX-heavy comedic videos were usually either scouting humor [Troop 4 videos] or made with the Youth Group friends, or with extended family over Christmases. Every single one of these categories accounts for well over half a dozen different video projects. We'd throw different parties and play games and it was often not organized by the church, it was just us hanging out and doing silly or fun things.
There's more memory of the groups there than I can reasonably cover here. But it was a great stretch of time in many ways and I'd like to emphasize that my life is not always miserable as may have been indicated elsewhere on this site.