just plain "church"

My husband and I attended the church our son attends yesterday morning. This was in an elementary school gym. The congregation was about 100, of which I’d say a generous third were students from the nearby Christian university. We were easily the oldest in the crowd. The Christian punk band our son is a member of led worship (they, thankfully, play more than punk - whew!).

The service was simple - about 30 minutes of singing/worship (one hymn interspersed between contemporary worship songs), followed by announcements (an upcoming outreach event – a babysitting service on a Saturday in early December to which parents from the neighborhood could drop off their kids in order to go shopping without them and for which flyers would be available next week), the offering, then a coffee break, during which the kids split for their own service.

Then the adults were seated again to listen to a talk, today introduced by about five minutes of the movie Les Miserables. The body of the lecture / sermon was a Bible-rich treatise based on Ephesians 4. From it I took away the truth that any gifts or talents I’ve been given are not mine to use on or for myself. Rather they have been given to me to bless others.

They used overheads and powerpoint to display the church’s trademark picture and name, as well as words of the songs, and of course a DVD player for the movie bits. The "screen" was a piece of cloth, draped over what looked like some kind of stage prop.

In the evening we attended our own denominational service - the third of three identical services of the day. We meet in a large building of our own. Mark, one of many worship leaders, led the worship, all contemporary songs accompanied by a rock ensemble. The announcements, words for the songs, Scripture passages, and the pastor’s sermon notes were displayed (via powerpoint) on two, large, opposite-facing screens at the front of the church.

After a couple of songs, we were invited to sit, and watch the baptism of two men - former drug and alcohol addicts and now in the Teen Challenge program. Their stories were, as these kind always are, God-originals – God speaking through childhood memories, a mother’s prayers, a response to the altar call of a healing evangelist in London

This month our cell group is on ushering duty so we were at our posts in the balcony to help serve communion and take the offering. Like last week, we witnessed a crowd as restless as teenagers in the bleachers at a basketball game. Actually the balcony crowd does have its share of teenagers, as well as busloads from local drug and alcohol recovery / rehab houses. There was an altar call after the preaching - and a response.

All that to say, from the reading that I’ve done around the topic, I don’t think either of these churches are cutting-edge. They wouldn’t be considered postmodern or emergent. However, neither are they passé. Thank God for the rainbow which is the church in 2004!