We're in the process of finding a new church. I'm not quite ready to talk about the underlying issues, but discontent with the pastor at Victory Baptist led to his forced resignation; Pastor Dave has yet to blog on this issue. We were well-pleased with his leadership, but there was unfortunately enough who weren't.
On top of that, our Sunday School class was disbanding, as our old leaders have both had their first child and have moved a half-hour away to Richmond; they're now too busy as parents to run the class and are looking to find a church home closer to their new home so the little guy can have friends they don't have to commute to Lexington to play with.
Thus, we were looking at a new pastor and a new Sunday School class; essentally, we'd be getting a new church whether we stayed or left. Given that the other Sunday school classes weren't particularly welcoming when we got here two years ago, the choices for fellowship if we stayed were limited. Also, a new pastor would likely be less generically evangelical and more tribally Baptist, which isn't where we were at.
One church we checked out was Crossroads Christian, a near-megachurch in SE Lexington that a former Victoryite friend of ours had moved to. It was scripturally-sound but a bit too culturally relevant. The sermon of the evening was kicking off a series on marriage, which brought out for some reason Black Horse and the Cherry Tree as the praise team's opening song. By the end of the Saturday evening service, I replied "No no, no-no-no, no,no, you're not the church for me."
It was solid and spoke to just shy of 2000 people (over 2000 and over the megachurch threshold if you include their Georgetown satellite campus) with a uber-contemporary style combined with solid, albeit more culture-centric, sermon and good discipleship training and outreach to the poor. They're "doing the stuff," as our old Lakeland pastor Dave Baker would say, but doing it with a backbeat.
A while back, I spoted a church billboard proclaiming themselves as "A church for people who like church." I Googled for that phrase and found that a fellow Lexintonian had tweeted on that sign, which turned out to be for Clays Mill Road Baptist.
Here's a church designer who also used that phrase back in 2007
The
best description I think we came up with is that our current product is
"Church for People Who Don't Like Church." This is your normal
unchurched guy who has no positive memories or association with church
and would be more impacted by a service that doesn't include a lot of
the elements that they would view as associated with church.
The
new product is designed to be "Church for People Who Like Church". This
is for the person who has some type of positive memories of church
growing up, but for some reason stopped attending. There are still safe
and comforting feelings associated with a lot of the traditional
aspects of "what a church should be". Not to say that this service will
be "traditional" in the negative sense. The room is the most
technologically advanced worship space we have ever built. But when they
attend this service, first time people will quickly acclimate to an
environment of worship that feels comfortable to them.
We haven't stopped going to church, but even for a former Vineyardite who is cool with casual attire and modern praise music, where was something "not church" kicking off a service with a KT Tunstall song. Eileen was bothered by the lack of a cross in the decor.
Michael Spencer is working through a series on an evangelical liturgy, here's part 6 on the call to worship.-
The loss of the call to worship or the replacement of it by- of
course- more music- is a significant and damaging loss. And a totally
unnecessary one.
A clear strong voice, calling us to recognize God, to be serious in
joy and whole-hearted in singing, praying and hearing…this is a
fundamental element of worship. No technology needed
This is an area in which the “seeker” model of worship presents a
real challenge. The call to worship is antithetical to the purpose of
seeker worship, which is to include those who do not consider
themselves to be the people of God or in relationship with God.
IMonk is no fuddy-duddy, but what I saw at Crossroads was more of a call to jam than a call to worship. It works for drawing in the unchurched, but it seems to get in the way of a deeper sense of worship.
Maybe Crossroads is a wading pool for folks who aren't ready for the deeper end. However, I want something a notch or two deeper.
More on what I found later.
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