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Speaking of churches…

March 24th, 2008 | No Comments

This weekend I attended one of the coolest churches ever. Ever.

First of all, the back-story.

Rebekah comes from a family that puts a lot of emphasis on family traditions. Basically this translates into “every holiday we are getting together with someone to eat a meal.” This is definitely a good thing and something that Rebekah and I fully intend to carry on in our family. Easter meals generally happen on Sunday afternoon after the entire family has gone to church together, however this year the family meal was on Saturday night because Rebekah’s brother just joined the staff of a church (and apparently Easter Sunday is kind of a big deal so they wanted him there). Since he was in Louisville and the rest of the family had no place better to go, we drove up to his church on Sunday morning.

And now for the good stuff.

Sojourn is a community of people in Louisville that gather together for Sunday worship and for weekly community groups. I know this sounds cliche because a church is a church and every church these days tries to call itself a “community of people” when really it’s just a building full on Sundays and empty the rest of the week. However, I really feel that Sojourn’s mentality is different. While I would still say that no church is perfect since people aren’t perfect and we are the ones in charge, this church has a lot of great things going on.

The people of Sojourn hold creativity and the arts very highly and they are a highly creative bunch. In fact, the old school building that they meet in doubles as an art gallery and music venue. They have people in the community that create beautiful pieces of art for use within the church and for special occasions.

A lot of the music that they use for their worship gatherings is original music which definitely helps them define their own collective voice. The general feel of the music at the service I attended was a modern, electric-guitar driven, bluegrass singing. The emphasis was not on playing a great show for the audience like it is at a lot of churches these days, it was very much on getting the audience involved in participating in every aspect of what was happening on stage. They definitely tried to unify the crowd instead of separating the audience and the stage. Their worship band even regularly records and releases CDs of their original music.

The leadership of the church encourages members to live in the community around their building so that they are all active members of their neighborhood (which is by no means the rich side of town). The teaching was simple but true and I never felt like the speaker was trying to (1) merely evoke an emotional response from the audience or (2) water his message down so far that everybody would leave feeling happy. These two traits are probably the most common issues that I have with Easter sermons (generally speaking). So it was a breath of fresh air to hear something different.

It is rare that I attend a church that makes me want to move to their city just to be a part, and that is pretty much what happened this past Sunday. If you are in the Louisville area over a Sunday (morning or evening) I would encourage you to check out Sojourn. Hopefully you will find it as refreshing as I did.

What qualities do you like/dislike in the American church? (Please, keep it constructive.)

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It only takes one

March 12th, 2008 | 1 Comment

I travel with a youth ministry team that visits a broad range of churches. One week we can be in a 1000+ seat venue with standing room only and the next week we could be in a backwoods church of 100 people with 20 youth staring at us. I don’t say that to complain at all–I like variety. I only bring it up to say that we meet a lot of different types of youth ministers and “church folk.”

One seemingly common phrase among event-based ministries keeps popping up and I’m just not sure exactly how I feel about it. It’s a phrase that I remember hearing (and probably saying) back in my youth days. The words may not always be the same, but is always goes something like this:

If just one person gets saved tonight then all of our work was worth it.

Now, definitely don’t hear this as an attack on the church or on church people. It’s just that this particular phrase has raised so many questions for me that I refuse to use it until someone can help answer them.

  1. First off, would someone ever say that they worked “too hard” for only one salvation? What if we could have done something differently that would have resulted in more salvation decisions? Does our amount of work really directly correlate to the number of decisions made at events? How much of that is really in our hands?
  2. If an event coordinator’s goal is “at least one salvation” could that ever keep him from working harder and doing something to facilitate more decisions? Can this mentality be a crutch? Can it be justification?
  3. Is salvation always the goal of church events? Or, at least, is it the only goal? Let’s assume that sometimes God has plans for an event that do not involve someone “getting saved.” Let’s say that sometimes he is merely challenging the Church to grow in their faith. Can we ever really know God’s plans for an event or see all of the results? If not, then can we fairly judge the success or failure of an event on whether or not someone is saved?

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