Daily Archives: March 5, 2006

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Manda and I visited a church this morning (Tom has a long work day) and I have a lot of thoughts.

1) the church has beautiful stained glass
2) the church has a real pipe organ - I love pipe organs
3) the church has some very friendly people
4) there was a lot of Scripture read before the sermon
5) they sang beautiful old hymns
6) the church is CRC.

but...
(there was no choir loft)
5) the pastor was not "animated"
6) the pastor was "tied" to the pulpit - that's where the microphone was
7) the pastor read the Scripture the sermon was based on once at the beginning, but I don't remember any connecting Scripture.
8) the prayers were written out in the bulletin
9) the pastor gave (LOTS) of examples, etc., and did connect them to the Scripture.
10) the pastor gave (LOTS) of anctidotes, and did connect them to the Scripture
11) the pastor gave (LOTS) of stories, and did connect them to the Scripture
(Do you think I'm after more expository teaching?)
12) the congregation appeared to be more heavily weighted toward the older end of the scale.
13) I saw very few young people/teens
14) I saw one (1) person raise their hands during worship (not me)
15) there was no choir loft (my commitment to my friend)

A couple other thoughts:

On my old church: The whole FirehouseFamily thing was a result of (or at least brought to a head by) work trips to New Orleans. This had not clicked with me (don't know why) but the Christian Reformed Church has a great organization in place called CRWRC. In my previous (married) life, I worked with the American Red Cross and in our county they worked very closely with CRWRC, so I know that this is a great and effective organization.

Sunshine went outside the denomination (with its established connections) and ended up with a relationship with FirehouseFamily.

Why? My friend (and I) think that it's because they are deliberately distancing themselves from denominational ties with the CRC.

The other thought.

It's been a while since I've been in a church without powerpoint. That's not a good thing or a bad thing...just a thing.