church-search
- Took a slightly different route to get there this week and hit all the lights green… and it’s a quick little trip from our house. 6 or 7 minutes, max.
- The place was definitely fuller this week than last time we attended. We parked on the street a few houses down from the church.
- Having now visited twice, we look familiar enough to some of the Maranatha folks (especially the ones who we’ve faced off against in church softball) that you can tell they recognize us and are this close to saying something to us… but none did.
- Had a nice chat after the service with the youth pastor, Thad. He had been reading this blog earlier this week (Hi, Thad!) and said he enjoyed it. He told me he had read my “church search” posts on the other church we visited, and then went to read the one about Maranatha. And while I might’ve expected him to hope that I’d give a good review, what he told me was actually not that at all. “Please, find some bad stuff,” he said. “That way we can take it to people [here at Maranatha] and say, ‘Look, we need to work on this…'”. I thought that was pretty cool. Always thinking about improvement.
- Ran into a couple more folks that I knew from other places but was unaware that they attended Maranatha. That was neat.
- The service ended a bit early this week because they were holding their annual meeting directly after the service. They planned on electing two elder candidates and one deacon candidate.
- Maranatha is in an older church building in the middle of a residential neighborhood. There were several cars parked on the street, but we found a spot in the parking lot.
- A couple people greeted us with “good morning!” as we walked in and found the foyer. An usher handed us bulletins and we hung up our coats. After we had stood there for another ten seconds or so, obviously looking around, the usher asked if we were visiting. When we said yes he introduced himself and welcomed us, but didn’t volunteer any info about children’s ministries even though we had both girls in tow.
- About that time Pastor Aaron walked into the foyer, welcomed us, and introduced us to one of the men who was helping teach one of the girls' classes this morning. That guy (whose name escapes me now) took us downstairs and helped us find the girls classes.
- We had just time enough to sign our girls in, get back upstairs, find a seat, and just start looking at the bulletin before the service started.
- They had a six-member worship team this morning: piano, two female vocalists, leader w/ acoustic guitar, bass player, and drummer.
- Six songs were sung throughout the service; four were relatively new songs, two were old hymns. Four of the six songs were familiar to me; Becky said she was familiar with all of them.
- The guy running the overhead had a little trouble keeping up with the music on the first song, which was a fast one. Otherwise, everything ran quite smoothly and the group sounded pretty good. Overall the congregational singing was strong.
- We were told afterwards that this wasn’t their usual music leader, and that things could sound quite different when she was present. I don’t know whether that’ll be good or bad, I guess we’ll find out another week.
- Maranatha has Sunday School at 9:00 - we didn’t make it to that this morning. Then they have age-segregated nurseries for children up through 4 years old during the service, and kids from 5 - 9 or so are dismissed to a Children’s Church during the sermon time.
- Laura and Addie both seemed to enjoy their mornings. The rooms were big and there were several kids in each room. Haven’t heard much else from either of them about it.
- Pastor Aaron is on a sermon series through the book of Isaiah. This week was chapter 32. At a chapter a week he has another 7 or so months to go.
- The sermon was maybe 40 - 45 minutes long, but good, solid stuff. Pastor Aaron seems to pretty much have one speed, but it’s energetic and not hard to listen to.
- The Gospel was clearly present in the message, as was a reminder of the hope that we have in God’s kingdom that will be established for eternity.
- After avoiding one church on our list because of their strident insistence on a particular sort of end-times views, it was good to hear from the pulpit (and I paraphrase here) that ‘a lot of Bible-believing people have come up with a lot of Bible-believing ideas about how the end times will happen, but in reality we don’t really know for certain.
- The congregation was a fairly mixed age there at Maranatha; there were lots of families with young children, but there were also a bunch of teenagers and a fair number of older folks. Good to see the variety.
- On the whole, people weren’t unfriendly, but weren’t perhaps as purposefully outgoing as the folks at Stonebridge were when we visited there. Outside of the folks we already knew (and the few people that they introduced us to), no one specifically came up to greet and welcome us. If it hadn’t been for Pastor Aaron finding us and shepherding us around, I got the feeling we would’ve had to ask a bunch of questions and more or less find our own way around to get the girls down to the children’s ministries.
- The church sanctuary is interesting; they have adapted what was obviously once a rather long, narrow sanctuary and turned the whole thing sideways. This makes the sanctuary very wide (4 rows of pews wide or so) but only about 6 rows deep. It works pretty well.
- In general, the church feels like they’ve outgrown their building but don’t have a solution for what to do next. The sanctuary wasn’t overly full this morning, but I can see where it could be. The stage felt somewhat cramped with the whole worship team up there. The basement has temporary walls set up to make the children’s classrooms, and the doors are short - like 6-foot-high short. Their website tells me that they had a baptismal service last week at a church several miles away, since they don’t have the facilities at their own building.
- It looks like there’s a lot of good stuff going on at Maranatha. There’s an emphasis on small groups, an apparent focus on missions, and a seeming dedication to qualified leadership.
- “Close to Construction” - Presentation on the movement in Israel to rebuild the Temple and how it could fit into Bible prophecy.
- “Pre-Tribulation Rapture” - A look at some different views of the rapture along with Biblical proof for the pre-tribulation position.
- “Signs of the Times” - Biblical evidence that we are now living in the end times.
- The folks seem quite friendly, and I’m enthusiastic about the age range I see. There is a good spread of old, young, teenagers, and children.
- A lot of the music is unfamiliar, but it’s pretty solid stuff. During each song I’d be wondering “man, where did this song come from?” and then the last slide would have the author’s name and I’d recognize it. The last song of the service was written by Bebo Norman and Mitch Dane and I thought hey, I’ve met Mitch, even had lunch with him. Kinda cool.
- The worship team was a little bit scant this week - fewer vocalists, no keyboard player at all. Makes me wonder how many folks the worship pastor actually has signed up, if he’s struggling to get people. If we were there I’d like to participate, just not be leading the team.
- Jeff Holland’s doppelganger of a young adult pastor was supposed to be preaching, but apparently came down with a nasty cold yesterday. So, the senior pastor got to wing it, but still gave us a good sermon on Psalm 23. Enjoyed it.
- The one thing I’ll gripe about the sermon, and I hassled Richard at Noelridge for the same thing: pastors that somehow refuse to use contractions when preaching. So far as I know, there’s nothing particularly unholy about ‘couldn’t’, ‘won’t’, ‘don’t’, and the like, but Pastor Richard at Noelridge and Pastor Randy at Stonebridge both seem to banish them from their vocabulary as soon as they get behind the pulpit. Anybody else get that from their pastors?
- They had a parking lot attendant to point people to the right row for parking. That same attendant was handing out, to folks walking in, 3x5 printed cards describing the traffic flow of the parking lot to reduce congestion between services. My logistical wife’s heart was warmed.
- Inside the door, the foyer was quite busy - lots of folks milling around, talking, drinking coffee. There is a hospitality booth inside the door on the right where they had free coffee and cookies, and a booth marked “Guest” something (I forget what, exactly) a little further into the foyer.
- It took all of about three seconds of us standing there, taking in the scene before a man came over to greet us, introduced himself, asked if we were visiting. We said yes, and he asked if we’d like to go find the children’s ministries for our girls. His wife then joined him and they walked us over to the children’s area where we signed in our kids, met their Sunday School teachers, were handed pagers so we could be buzzed if there were any issues. They were obviously still working through issues with the new facility and procedures, but they were doing a good job.
- Stonebridge has a rather large worship team led by a guitar-playing pastor. They had six vocalists, two guitars, a bass, and two percussionists. (A rather uncomfortable-looking pianist joined them for one song.)
- On a whole, I liked the setup; there were enough vocalists to give it a solid, group sound. The musicians were fairly solid, and the music minister was obviously quite talented.
- The music minister has a computer monitor/mouse right on the stage, which he was referencing a few times. At first I thought it might just be displaying the lyrics, but eventually I came to conclude that he was, a few times, turning on a track of some sort to go with the worship team. Not sure how big a fan I am of that, but it was seamless, so, good for him.
- During the first couple of songs, the congregational singing was fairly weak. I knew the songs, so I assumed the congregation should as well. However, the music minister said something about one of the songs being “unfamiliar”, so maybe he was just springing new stuff on the congregation. When they sang a couple more familiar songs after the sermon, the singing was strong.
- Overall, the songs were pretty solid, though I really would’ve loved to have another hymn dropped into the set somewhere. Still, I won’t judge it on a single week.
- The senior pastor is preaching a series from the Psalms, which to my mind isn’t an easy task. Sunday’s passage was Psalm 8. I felt like he did a good job of taking David’s psalm of praise and showing us how we could apply it to our lives. He pointed to the several passages in the New Testament that refer back to Psalm 8, too. The sermon was about 30 minutes, didn’t feel too short or too long.
- The pastor made an effort to bring current events into the sermon, referencing the economic situation a few times, to decent effect. He brought the Gospel into it near the end, which was welcome. There was no “altar call”, but he invited anyone who wanted to talk further to come down and chat with him after the service.
- Stonebridge has Sunday School for children of all ages (and perhaps adults, too - I’m still fuzzy on that) during the 9:00 hour, and then has a sort of junior church for Kindergarten and below during the 10:45.
- In a surprising, but welcome, turn of events, both girls' Sunday School classes were taught by men; Laura’s by a grandfatherly type, Addie’s by a guy somewhere near my age. Both classes had additional helpers, and we were told they rotate parents through the class, too; if your kid is in there you’ll be asked to just show up as a helper once a quarter or so. (As far as I’m concerned, that’s a FANTASTIC strategy, on several levels. Well done!)
- We didn’t get much out of Addie about her class, but Laura was quite talkative about hers. First, though, all we heard was that “they needed someone to be a princess, so I raised my hand, and I got to be the princess!”. We were rather confused. Finally, she provided some more background: “most of the other kids were crocodiles, and there was a baby in the river… ‘cause we were talking about Moses!” Ah, it becomes clearer!
- I was impressed by the friendly people at Stonebridge. The greeters at the door smiled and shook our hands on the way in, the folks who showed us around were quite nice as well. As I was waiting for Becky at one point, another woman came up to greet me, saying “I don’t think I’ve met you…”. As we talked, she acknowledged she was hedging her bets, because they’ve just compressed from three morning services (at the old facility) to two, so some of the faces at the new services are unfamiliar.
- I ran into a couple people I knew from work. Always interesting to encounter those folks in a quite different situation. Gives you some new perspective on them.
- In the oddest twist, we looked across the sanctuary to see a couple who are friends of ours from Noelridge. We had a very “what are you doing here?” moment after the service.
- One of my concerns going in was the big new building. Have they really spent their money wisely? Have they gone into lots of debt? I don’t have an answer on the debt part, but I was suitably impressed with the design and economy of their facility; they appear to have spent the money in places where it was needed without going overboard.
- Sitting in the sanctuary (which seats about 500) I could easily have brought myself to believe I was sitting in a much larger auditorium. I had to look around and remind myself it wasn’t that big, and there weren’t that many people.
- The sanctuary could really use some more helpful aesthetics. I’m not complaining about the fact that it’s obviously a metal building and you can still see some girders, bolts, ventilation ducts, and cables up in the ceiling; I’m more disappointed that there was nothing on stage to give you any indication it was a church. There were a few banners in the back of the sanctuary, but nothing on the stage. From appearances, I could’ve just as well been in a high school auditorium. I’ll give them a little slack on this one - they’re only a few weeks in to using their new facility. If they get to Christmas and the stage is still just as bare, then I’ll have some more serious questions.
- The Young Adult pastor is a dead ringer for Jeff Holland, and even dropped a “y’all” into his talk during announcement time.
- Theological pickiness. I don’t expect that I’m gonna agree with everything at any church I attend, (heck, I didn’t at Noelridge or Imago, either), but I’d like it to be close. And I’ll need to have the freedom at a church to hold some views that don’t quite line up and not be ostracized for those. For example: one of the churches we’ve been considering has a rather long excursis in their doctrinal statement concerning the exact sequence of a premillenial end times. I’m OK with them believing that, but I won’t be able to handle it if they’re dogmatic about it.
- Leadership Expectations. Now, I have no desire to be in leadership again for a while. But I’m going to want to have the pastor and elders of a church I attend be men who enjoy reading and discussing theological topics. I almost feel sorry for the pastor and/or elders who will have the typical so-you’re-interested-in-our-church meeting with me. I have a feeling I’ll have far more questions for them than they will have for me. Bonus points for anybody that’s read any N. T. Wright. :-)
- Limited Choices. Now, while some of my friends will step in and suggest a bigger denominational change, I just can’t see us moving to a more mainline denomination, even a conservative branch of one. We’re not gonna end up Catholic, Lutheran, or Methodist, and we don’t even have conservative Anglican or Presbyterian options in Cedar Rapids. Which pretty well leaves us Baptist, Bible, maybe E Free, and, well, not much else. Even in as big a town as Cedar Rapids. :-(
- The Struggle for Contentment. I am acknowledging here up front that we may not find someplace that I’m completely happy with. And that will have to be OK. I would dearly love to have Steve McCoy’s church or Joe Thorn’s church or Rae Whitlock’s church nearby. I would totally go for an Acts29 church, and would take a very long hard look at one of the new breed of PCA churches. (We have one PCA church here about 30 minutes away, and it appears to be the old, stodgy flavor of the PCA.) But given that those aren’t available, we will have to be content with what we have available here. We’re praying that God will be clear in His leading.
The Church Search: A Conclusion of Sorts
After Nick chided me last night about my infrequent blogging, and after Roger noted elsewhere that he’d never really heard any conclusions from our church search, it occurred to me that I’d never really written a concluding chapter to that story. Let me fix that now.
We knew when we made our list of churches to visit that it wouldn’t be a long list. We started with three churches that were our primary focus, and after ruling out one of them midway through, it was really down to two: Maranatha Bible and Stonebridge. We visited both of those churches multiple times, evaluating and praying that God would direct us. Looking for churches is frustrating from a time perspective, too - there are only so many church services per week that you can visit. Patience is required. Not easy.
In the end, while we liked both churches and could’ve probably been happy at either, we decided back in mid-November that we would give it a go at Stonebridge. There’s a lot of good going on there, the teaching has been solid, there are lots of ministry opportunities. We’ve signed up to join a small group that will start meeting next week. I’m excited to get the chance to start to get to know some people and really feel like I’m a part of the place. We’ll see how God continues to lead, but for now, we’re happy to start calling Stonebridge home. Let’s hope it’s a while before we have to do the church search again.
The Church Search, Week 7
There was no post for week 6 last week since we were out of town for the weekend. So now we come to week 7. Yesterday we visited Maranatha Bible Church for the second time. I gave quite a bit of detail when we last visited, I’ll just note a few updates here.
First Impressions
Music The regular music leader was back this week. Just looking at her (a short, grandma-aged woman who reminded me a lot of one of my college calculus professors), you wouldn’t expect that she is an aggressive, guitar-playing music leader. But she is, and she was excellent. The closing song after the sermon was Victory in Jesus, and while I might’ve resisted the very last almost-end-and-then-do-a-slow-drum-fill-into-a-final-final-chorus thing, it was just so much fun I can’t really complain a bit.
Children’s Ministries No real updates here. The girls had a good time.
Sermon Pastor Aaron was trying to crank through two chapters of Isaiah (34 and 35) in the space of 45 minutes, and he did a great job. Very much enjoyed the sermon.
People/Observations
All in all, it was an enjoyable Sunday morning. Good to be back in the house of the Lord after being out of town last weekend. Becky and I haven’t really discussed the church search any more since yesterday morning, so I’m not sure what our plans are going to be for next Sunday or following Sundays. Much prayer and discussion will be involved, I’m sure.
The Church Search, Week 5
This morning we got up off our behinds and visited the next church on our short list: Maranatha Bible Church. Maranatha has been around for nearly 30 years in Cedar Rapids, sitting on 25th Street near Mount Mercy College. We were familiar with some of the people before we visited; we’ve known Pastor Aaron Telecky and his family for several years, Youth Pastor Thad Joyce and his family live just a few blocks up from us here in Hiawatha, and several other faces in the church were familiar from many years of church league softball. It’s a bit interesting giving my update on Maranatha this afternoon since I know Aaron reads this blog. Aaron, feel free to comment if you want to.
First Impressions
Music
Children’s Ministries
Message
People
Observations
As with Stonebridge a few weeks ago, it’s just impossible to get a full impression and make any sort of decision based on only attending for one Sunday. Next week we’ll be out of town, but I expect that the following week we’ll be back at Maranatha to give it another shot. Thanks to Aaron and the whole group there at Maranatha for a good Sunday morning.
Good friends say things like this
Good friends aren’t afraid to say hard things.
Last night I had a friend tell me: “Hey, Chris, this church search blog thing is cool, but you need to get your butt in gear and actually get to church.”
Now, he and I both understand that we’ve had good reasons for not getting to church the past two weeks, and his comment was somewhat in jest, but still, that’s the kind of thing a reliable friend will tell you. I’m blessed to have a friend like that.
The Church Search, Week 4
We had plans to go to church on Sunday. And the best of intentions. But even though we were all up quite early thanks to the time change, the cold and cough situation at our house made it seem prudent to stay home. As much as we’d like to attend, everyone would probably appreciate not being infected by Addison’s runny nose and my cough.
Next week, Lord willing.
The Church Search, Week 4 Preview
This week our plans have us heading to Maranatha Bible Church. We know the Maranatha pastor and youth pastor and their families - good folks all around. From their website I see that Pastor Aaron is working through a series in Isaiah, which should be interesting. 10:15 AM on Sunday. Always tough to go someplace new, but a little easier when there’s familiar faces.
Oh, the other place I’m familiar with Maranatha from: church softball. Guess there might be a few more familiar faces there than I was originally thinking.
As usual, I’ll do some analysis/review on Sunday or Monday.
The Church Search, Week 3
After deciding early in the week that Cedar Valley Bible was off our short list, we spent a lot of time talking about where we might go next. We know the other place we definitely want to try out is Maranatha Bible Church, so we tentatively decided last night that we’d head there this morning.
Then last night Laura decided she didn’t want to sleep. From 3:00 until 5:00 she was awake in our room at least four times. Needless to say, Becky and I didn’t get a lot of sleep. Finally Laura went to sleep and slept in until 8:00. As I write this at 9:15, Becky is still sleeping. Given that we’d need to leave the house in 30 minutes to get to Maranatha on time, I think we’ll be cashing it in this morning and giving it another shot next week. Part of me feels guilty for not getting to church; the other part of me is happy that we have the freedom to just rest when we need to. God is good.
Short list got shorter
Well, we talked about it some more last night and agreed that Cedar Valley Bible Church is off our short list for the reasons I discussed earlier. So now we’re back to looking at our short list, figuring out where to head next. Not sure if we’ll visit Stonebridge one more week or skip down to the next church on the list.
More likely we’ll sit down with the phonebook, newspaper, or some other reference list and work through the short list again to figure out what places we might have missed… then we’ll go from there. Still praying for guidance on a daily basis.
An end-times deal-breaker
So yesterday afternoon I noted that the next church on our short list for visiting during the Church Search was probably Cedar Valley Bible Church. I know a few folks there, including the couple that has brought Andrew Peterson and company to town twice for concerts. I’ve been to a wedding there, too, and my overall impression was that the church might be a little further over into the conservative homeschooling culture than I’d be comfortable with, but then, it might be OK.
The only other note I’d made about Cedar Valley thus far was when perusing their Doctrinal Statement online, it seemed to me that they had a far more detailed and lengthy statement on the End Times than do most doctrinal statements I’ve read. A very literal, pre-trib, dispensational sort of end times view. Still, as of yesterday, the church was still on my short list.
Then last night I cruised on over to the Cedar Valley website again to check out Sunday morning service times, and I noted this link on the sidebar: “2008 Second Coming Conference”. That’s right, in November Cedar Valley Bible will be bringing in a special speaker from Friends of Israel to speak three times over two days. The topics:
And that’s just about a deal-breaker for me. Let me explain a little bit why.
I grew up in what I’d consider a pretty standard set of evangelical churches. We attended a C&MA church for a while in Fremont, NE, then a Bible church in Granbury, TX. I got the basic dispensational teaching on the end times - basically, Left Behind without all the dramatic stuff that made LaHaye and Jenkins best-sellers. Imminent rapture, followed by a 7-year tribulation, followed by Christ’s return for 1000 years, followed by Satan being let loose again on the earth, followed by another clean-up and the ultimate destruction of the earth and creation of a new one, etc. Most of the time I was just confused by it. Maybe it was partly my practical engineering nature - we’re not gonna know what’s happening until it’s done, right? So who really cares?
I stayed basically in that theological position until reading N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope a year ago. In Surprised by Hope, Wright explains, among other things, the amillennial position on end times in a way that actually made sense to me. It turns out there is a whole ‘nother way to interpret the passages in Peter, Thessalonians, and Revelation that I had never been introduced to. And that there were legitimate, reasonable Christians who believed it. Talk about an eye-opener. Since then I’ve read a couple of books by Kim Riddlebarger on amillennialism, which too have been helpful. At the moment I’d say I’m at the point of leaning toward an amillennial position, but feeling no need to be dogmatic about it. There are far more important things to get worked up about than the end times.
Which leads me to my end-times deal-breaker with Cedar Valley Bible. This (apparently second-annual) “Second Coming Conference” shows me that they’re very interested in being dogmatic about a pre-trib dispensational end-times viewpoint. And while I’m OK with them believing that (heck, Noelridge, Imago, and Stonebridge all have the word “premillennial” in their doctrinal statements), I’m not really OK with a church being dogmatic about it. That just won’t work for me.
Becky and I had a good talk about end-times stuff last night and why I feel this way about it. I don’t know that we’ve decided anything yet, but I’m really leaning toward taking Cedar Valley off our list.
[N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope at wtsbooks.com] [Kim Riddlebarger’s A Case for Amillennialism at wtsbooks.com] [Kim Riddlebarger’s The Man of Sin: Uncovering the Truth about the Antichrist at wtsbooks.com]
The Church Search, Week 2
Week 2 of the Church Search took us back to Stonebridge Church for the second week in a row. (We kinda figure it’ll take at least a few weeks at any given place to really be able to make some sort of reasonable judgment on things.) We got out the door five minutes earlier this morning, leaving at 8:30 for a 9:00 service. We were there in 15 minutes, but the child check-in desk was quite a bit crazy this morning, so we still ended up not getting in to the sanctuary until the worship band had just about finished the opening song. Hopefully they’ll get the check-in stuff figured out soon.
Some continued/revised impressions carrying on from last week:
Next week Stonebridge is doing their official dedication of the new building, and they’re expecting a LOT of folks. They’ve actually gone door-to-door to everyone within a one-mile radius of the church dropping off small gift bags and inviting folks to visit. If it’s gonna be that crazy, we’ll probably take next week to visit the next church on our list. Not exactly sure yet which church that’ll be, but I’m kinda guessing Cedar Valley Bible.
It may be a little early to come to conclusions about Stonebridge after only two weeks, but my interim conclusion is that I like it, a lot. There’s a lot of good things going on there, a lot of good attitudes about things I think are important, and good teaching coming from the pulpit. If all the churches we visit are this good, it’s gonna be a difficult decision.
Living Life Together
It is becoming more and more clear to me lately how we are created for community, and how much we need that community to live our lives. When we announced a month ago (though it seems like it has been much longer) that we were leaving Imago Christi Church, the primary reasons were a need to recalibrate and reprioritize. What I have started to see in the past month is how much the need for community played into our busyness and weariness.
Let me back up just a bit. While it was by no means the beginning of the issue, Becky and I had a long discussion on the way home from an Andy Osenga concert earlier this summer. (I’m stunned that I didn’t blog about it at the time, but I did post pictures to Flickr.) Andy introduced his song “Hold the Light”, as usual, by telling the story about his small group. They have gathered in somebody’s backyard every week for a couple of years, sharing life stories, praying, encouraging, and living life together. It’s a powerful song, and a powerful story. On the long drive home I found myself getting jealous of my friend Andy. How I would love to have a group of folks like that.
Over the past several years as a church leader I’ve been a part of dozens of discussions where we’ve talked about building community. How do we build community? We know we need it. How do we make it happen? Too often the solution seemed to be another program. Things like “let’s organize a small group book study” or “let’s start a group based around this particular interest”. We’d try to find leaders for the group, put out a signup list, and then get frustrated because the same people who were asking for community weren’t signing up for stuff.
Here’s where I think we, and many churches, have made the mistake: we focus so much time and energy on church programs that we rob ourselves of the time to just live life together. The best friendships and most supportive community I’ve experienced in my life haven’t come out of any church program; they’ve come from people deciding to get together around meals and activities to just live life. Meeting up at someone’s home to play basketball, eat a meal, watch football on TV. Taking off on the spur of the moment to help someone move a piece of furniture. Taking a Saturday to help someone move to a new house. What saddens me is how many times we’ve not done things like this because we were too busy - and usually too busy with church stuff.
This is easy to lament, but harder to correct. We’ve taken the first step by the only method we could see that would work. Now we’re looking for another church, and the place we’re looking for will need to place a high priority on this sort of community. I’m praying every day that God helps us find it.
The Church Search, Week 1
Yesterday morning we did something we haven’t done in a couple of months now: set our alarm on a Sunday morning, got up, and got to a morning church service. (Yes, we have been to church in the past two months… but Imago meets on Saturday nights.) As I noted on Saturday, our first stop was Stonebridge Church. Stonebridge is an Evangelical Free church with an average attendance of just over 600, which, by our standards, is a large-ish church. Stonebridge just finished building a new facility; yesterday was their second Sunday in the new building. They hold two services each week, and we attended the earlier one (9:00) on Sunday.
First Impressions
Music
Message
Children’s Ministries
People
Observations
Overall, we had a quite favorable impression of Stonebridge Church from our first visit. We’re planning on going back again next week - one week is definitely not a large enough sample on which to make decisions.
The Church Search, Week 1 Preview
Well, tomorrow morning we officially begin our look for a new church here in the Cedar Rapids area. We’re starting at a church called Stonebridge, a medium-sized Evangelical Free church on the southwest side of town. They’re just on their second week in a new building, which actually didn’t affect our decision to try them out… if anything we’re tentative, figuring that it’ll take them a few weeks in the new building to hit stride and get the kinks worked out.
I’m surprised by how nervous I am about visiting a new place tomorrow. I know, I’m an engineer, I don’t do change well. We’ll just pray that it goes well and that God gives us some clarity in the upcoming weeks and months as to where we should land.
Beginning the church search
After making the decision to leave Imago Christi at the end of the month, we find ourselves in an unfamiliar position: starting the church search. My church history is fairly short and doesn’t include much searching: while growing up we attended a C&MA church, a small Berean church, and then a small Bible church. When I went to college I floated around for my first semester until Becky invited me to her medium-sized Bible church, which we then attended for the next 3.5 years. When we moved to Iowa, we were recommended to a church up here, and after about three weeks of visiting other churches decided to stick there where we had been recommended, at Noelridge. We were at Noelridge for 8.5 years before leaving to plant Imago, and we were at Imago for the better part of a year. So my total church searching experience is a few months of aimless wandering in college and a few weeks after moving to Iowa. That ain’t much.
Church searching has changed a lot since 9 years ago when we were looking around here in Cedar Rapids. Back then your main resources were the yellow pages and the religion section of the newspaper. Today, though, it’s all about the websites. You can find out a lot about a church’s beliefs and ministries with just a few clicks of the mouse. You can even listen to recent sermons. I think I’ll have to be careful not to do too much pre-judging by the websites.
Several things I am anticipating will make this church search tough:
We get a pass this weekend - we’re leaving in a couple of hours to head to Wisconsin to visit my folks. But next weekend we’ll have to bite the bullet, pick one of our options, and give it a try. I’m planning on blogging our adventures, so check back. If you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments.