The Journey Ends

Okay…this will conclude our Journey to a New Church…for two reasons. My wife commented that this blog is making me sound like a very critical person and that’s not the person she knows and loves. Second, we have found a great church and hopefully will be able to invest ourselves.

So...let’s do this! The second church that we visited was a very contemporary church that did not seem to care if you came or not. Again…not much interaction at the door before or after. The worship was very pathetic, bland and not very moving. The message was given by the senior pastor and was quite good. The pastor was engaging, creative and overall very effective. I really liked this guy and his method. Unfortunately the sermon is just one spoke in the wheel. It takes a village (sorry)…it takes a team to pull off a great worship experience. Just one area functioning the way it should is not enough. In our previous church plants our team goal was always to make the experience from the car to the seat and back again a positive experience.

We did attend this particular fellowship for two Sundays just to make sure, but the results were the same, so we moved on.

The third church had been recommended by many people, so our expectations were high. We were greeted in the parking lot by a very friendly fellow driving a golf cart who offered to take us to the door. He was actually the small group pastor on staff and was very engaging. The greeters were also very engaging and helpful. The foyer was packed with people, which was actually exciting. There was coffee and donuts and folks handing out bulletins. So our expectations began to rise.

The sanctuary was darkened, the stage was lit with colored lights and the overall mood was very cool. A young man in jeans picked up a guitar and the band joined in with several upbeat worship songs. The worship leader was very passionate, which was a nice change from our previous adventures. However (you knew this was coming…right?), the body did not seem to notice or care or engage in the worship. I felt bad for the guy, because he was really anointed and was pouring his heart into it, but no one else cared to join him. In fact, I felt like if I had sung out loud, everyone would have turned around to see the idiot who was singing.

At the conclusion, a video was shown with testimonies of some of the members and their experiences since attending this fellowship. Some were funny, some were very moving. Overall…a great way to introduce the body to someone visiting for the first time. The pastor then entered the stage. He was a middle-aged fellow with a kind face. He began to speak and introduced the message which was one of a series that he had begun a couple of weeks before. As I listened, it was obvious that he was using many simple and cliché phrases. I kept waiting for him to “ramp” it up, but he continued in his monotone manner for 35 minutes.

The conclusion was a standing invitation for anyone to receive Christ. The worship leader sang for a few moments and then everyone was dismissed. The exit was again very swift for most everyone.

We attended a couple more times just to make sure, but again, there was really nothing here to engage us. So we decided to continue on our journey. As I stated in the beginning, we have finally found a very engaging body. It is a campus of a multi-site church with awesome worship on stage and in the body. The sermons are very effective and are shown on the big screen (which I thought initially would be weird, but now, it’s like going to a good movie). We have been approached on several occasions already about joining different small groups. And the atmosphere on Sundays is very open, exciting and just plain fun. At the same time, I think I’ve ended up crying during every worship service so far!

So ends our journey to a new church. My prayer is that a pastor or church leader will use our observations and experiences and be able to examine their own church environment through the eyes of visitors.