This last Sunday I went to another new church here in the area. I was on my own because the rest of my family was at a Girl Scout Winter camp in another city. “B” and I thought it would be a good idea for me to try out another church on our list. This was to get a feeling for the church and make sure that it wasn’t another, flat out NO, church.
I had 3 Sunday morning services to chose from. I decided to go to the first one since I was awake. So, I headed over. I got there and found a place to sit. The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t a very large sanctuary. My guess would be 350 tops (probably less) would be capacity. About 10 minutes into service I would say there were about 200 people there. There was a wide range of ages there from my age, older people, younger people, babies, and youth. I was happy to see the spread in ages.
The service was very similar to One Life church that my family attended for a while back in Mesa, AZ. In fact of the 4 songs they did during the service, 3 of them I remember from singing at One Life. They turned the lights down for the songs, but not smoke machines and no moving around lights like there was at One Life – so that was nice. The praise team wasn’t as good as at One Life, but that may have been related to the quality of what was coming out of the speakers possibly. I didn’t feel that the person running the soundboard was doing a great job (but that is my opinion).
The lead pastor was fine. He seemed to be in his mid-30’s and was relaxed on stage. He sat on a stool the entire time and that was fine. He talked on a passage from Ezekiel. It was a fine message. Then they did communion, which they apparently do every week. The message there was pretty typical, and I had no issues with that.
During the “greet your neighbor” time of the service I asked the people around me if the church did Christmas music during December, and I was told they did. That was good to hear since at One Life they wouldn’t do Christmas music, which was a disappointment to our family.
After service I went over to the “guest area” and asked a few more questions. The elder I talked to was able to answer all my questions and seemed pretty nice. This church focuses on life groups and not Sunday School classes which, as stated before, very typical in today’s churches. They did have one adult life group on Sunday mornings so there is something that “B” and I could attend if we wanted to. There is a middle school church time during one of the services, and a kids church during two of the services. One downside is that the weekly youth Bible study occurs on the one night of the week that we have pretty open and may conflict with with violin lessons that are getting ready to start up.
I talked to the family about it once they got home and we thought we would try it out as a family at least once to see what everyone thought of it.
So overall opinion – NOT a strike, let’s call it a ball at the moment.