Happy Anniversary!

Quick, wish me and my wife a happy anniversary! My two kids, too. It's not our wedding anniversary, though, or even the anniversary of our first date as a couple. But two years ago today was our first date, in a sense... our first date with the church we've been part of ever since, The Bridge in Bixby, Oklahoma. You can read what I blogged back then about the experience here... we're in a beautiful new sanctuary now, and the children's ministry is quite different since then (for one thing, the kids don't come into the adult song service any more), but we still love it. It's the place for us to be!

This past weekend someone asked me why we had left our old church (which they still attend). They weren't being defensive or accusatury; just looking for information. What I told them there I'm not going to say here, any more than I did back when we originally left, because I still have immense respect for that church, and love for our friends who still attend there, and I would never want to be perceived as talking that church down. You could find some clues, though, in this post I wrote back then about what we were looking for in a new church, and what we ultimately found at The Bridge. As I read back over that post, I'm actually a little bit amazed that, in the two years we've been there, The Bridge has met all of those expectations in one way or another. There's not a paragraph in that post that I can say, nope, The Bridge isn't like that. It's like all of them. Maybe not in every tiny detail in every case, but in most of the details and certainly in all of the larger brush strokes. It seems like what we had on our hearts was what God ultimately brought us to... or, what God knew He was going to bring us to was what He laid on our hearts. Does it really matter which one it was? We found a place where we are happy and fulfilled, and that's an amazing feeling.

One of my favorite things about The Bridge is something that I think many people wouldn't think to put on their "important things" list if they were looking for a new church, but to me it is of central importance, and I think part of what we like about The Bridge is that it's clearly part of Pastor Orlando's priorities too. Once upon a time in history, people could not read. Also, there were no televisions and no CD players. There were no cassette players and there were no radios. The only way that people could learn about God was by personally hearing the Word recited out loud, and maybe expounded upon. I imagine that's the way it was in Bible days, and throughout much of history afterward, up to the time that sound recording was invented. But now, for someone who wants to know about the Bible, not only are there literally hundreds of Bible translations in English, but they are available at Bible bookstores, mainstream bookstores, the grocery store book aisle, your favorite Wal-Mart or Target, and for free in the drawer next to the bed in your hotel room. Online, site after site has the Bible available for free for searching and reading, often in many translations (sometimes so many it could make your head swim). Often, these Bible study sites will not only have the Bible text itself, but multiple study helps such as commentaries, Bible dictionaries, Greek/Hebrew lexicons, sermons, maps... whole Pastor's Office Bookshelf-loads of information. Even if you don't read, you might be able to figure out how to access the audio versions of the Bible on those sites. These days, if you fail to know what the Bible says, it's not because nobody was there to read it out loud to you. It's easily available.

You don't need a preacher to stand up in front of you and expound on the Scriptures, either. In addition to those online sites full of information, Christian bookstores across the country, and powerful Bible study software applications, there are thousands upon thousands of hours of television programming every day in which pastors and other ministers share their messages. So not only do you not have to have the Bible read to you, you do not even have to go to a church to hear a good message about the Bible. In fact, there's a pretty good chance these days that even your own pastor can be seen on TV or heard on the radio; I listen to a few-weeks-old message from my church's Sunday morning service on the radio every Sunday when I'm getting ready for church. You don't need to hear a sermon from a guy standing in front of you at all; there's a guy on TV who will happily provide a similar experience to you while you sit comfortably on your couch.

Decades ago, contemporary-style worship music was hard to come by. If you wanted to break away from hymns and sing something a little more modern in style, you were probably going to have to learn the song at church and sing it yourself. These days, Christian radio is filled with pop songs that are not only religious in theme, but that are actually worship songs. Often, the song hits the radio, and then later becomes a staple of church worship! And even if you don't have Christian radio where you live, you can buy a CD of Hillsong or Chris Tomlin or any number of other artists, and you've got a worship experience happening in your living room or car or earbuds that contains authentic worship music, probably performed and produced far better than your local church is able to do with volunteer musicians and production staff. You don't really need a church to fill your need for worship music, either.

I don't want to seem to be speaking out against pastors or their messages, reading the Word out loud, participating in a real live worship song service, or any other part of the Church experience. But I do want to highlight one thing that you cannot get from sitting on the sofa at home. What you can't do at home is build relationships with other believers. We need relationships with other believers in order to stay strong and live the life that Christ is calling us to. And to be honest, when you have a social, church-family bond with the people around you, all of those other things - the singing, the message, even things like giving in the offering - all of those things take on added significance, added importance. Being in a worship service with other believers is an amazing experience... being in a worship service with church family is even more amazing. It can make even a mistake from one of the people on stage turn into a worshipful experience when you know the person, know their heart. I love it when I'm in church and I catch sight of someone I know, maybe someone who has struggled with something in life or someone who is still struggling, and I see them worshiping with all of their heart. It makes me want to worship God with all of my heart, too. Their gratitude and love for the Lord reminds me that I've got a lot to be grateful and loving for, as well. Iron sharpening iron, so to speak.

I want to celebrate the two-year anniversary of us joining ourselves to The Bridge church. We love the people; we love and feel cared about by and appreciated by pastors and staff; our children learn about the Word; it's a fabulous place to be. If you're in the Tulsa/Bixby area and your heart is telling you it's time for a change, come on out and see what's happening. We'd love for you to become part of our little corner of the family of God!

Church Shopping: We May Have A Winner!

This weekend we got around to visiting The Bridge church in Bixby. It's been on our list ever since the beginning of our search; in fact, in a sense it was on our list even before we decided that we needed to change churches! The pastor was once our worship leader elsewhere, and he just returned to the Tulsa area I think less than a year ago after associate-pastoring a church in another state for something like five or six years or so. They have a monthly worship-only service that we've been invited to several times but were unable to attend for one reason or another, and several weeks ago we actually came out for one of their periodic potluck dinners. We've really been looking forward to this visit, partly because this is a small congregation (I think about 200 or so attending on Sundays) which is a real contrast with the other churches we've been test-driving (mostly in the couple-of-thousand attendees range, I'd say). Plus we have a LOT of friends who go to The Bridge already. So we were excited about coming to a real live service... in fact, I posted on Facebook a few days before, "warning" some of our friends who go there that we would be lurking on Sunday!

Early Sunday morning... about 4am... my 9-year-old boy got scared. You know how kids get scared for no reason? I know it happened to me when I was a kid, and I think it happens to us grownups sometimes too. Well, he just freaked out. A few nights before, he had gotten spooked in the middle of the night when he saw a threatening form in his room; the form turned out to be a t-shirt! He laughed it off pretty quickly that time, but not this time. I don't even know what exactly had set him off, but it was a good hour and a half before he calmed down enough to leave us alone. So we're talking 5:30am, and my wife had set an alarm for 6am to make sure she had plenty of time to get herself and the baby ready and still take the 30-minute drive to where the church is. We passed back out, and didn't wake up again until about 8. Services we've been visiting at Guts start at 11 and they're close (maybe a 5-minute drive); services at The Bridge are at 10, so that means we have to get up about an hour and a half earlier for The Bridge in order to get the same amount of getting-ready time before we have to leave. I woke Cathy up and told her that it was 8:00 so she had time to get ready and we could go to Guts or somewhere else; she surprised me by being pretty adamant that she wanted to go to The Bridge, even though it would be hard to get ready in time! So we went into four-alarm get-ready-for-church mode, and I was actually pretty surprised that we managed to get everyone fed and dressed and out the door almost exactly on time... we arrived at church nor more than five or six minutes before service time. Good thing their child check-in process is fairly simple!

We parked next to a car which turned out to contain a friend of ours from way back, and we chatted briefly on the way in. There were a LOT of familiar faces, most of them people we had gone to church with when Pastor Orlando was our worship leader, so we felt pretty comfortable and extremely welcomed. At The Bridge, the children are actually expected to be in the music part of the worship service right along with the adults, so we had them with us for that part (the baby did well until her big brother started playing peekaboo with her... we're going to have to keep the two of them separated during that part of the service from here on out). After worship the children go into separate classrooms for more age-appropiate Bible lessons, so we took them on back and were in place for the offering and the message.

The message was awesome. In fact, it was particularly relevant for a family looking for a new church home: it was about changing yourself to fit into the will of God for your life. We spent a lot of time listening to Pastor Orlando teaching the Word back when he was Music Director Orlando, and we loved his teaching style even then. In fact, I would encourage you to visit this page on the church's Web site and give him a listen. He has a very unique delivery, and what he's saying is so relevant and immediate. It's really neat stuff.

After the service we asked our son how the lesson was in his class. Apparently instead of kind of telling the kids a Bible story while they sit quietly and listen, in his class things were quite free-form, with discussion and back-and-forth between children and teacher the whole time the teacher was sharing the Bible story. To me, that is SO COOL. I hope that's the way it always is for the children, because that's perfect for Mikey. Honestly, I think most children would pick a very participatory lesson to sitting and watching what was going on, even if what was going on involved them to some extent (a game girls vs. boys with everyone cheering for your own team and everyone wins something, for example), but for Mikey, being able to speak up and put in his two cents will be so good for him. Meanwhile, the baby was having a good time playing and babbling at the nursery teacher... afterward she told me "She was talking the whole time, but I really couldn't understand her!" I told her, "Well, I saw you were watching some VeggieTales, you probably heard a 'Bop' the Tomato a couple of times," and she nodded like she was remembering a few Bops. :)

The Bridge is a very music-rich church. We knew most of the musicians on stage, plus a number of musicians in the congregation, and most churches would wet themselves to have the quality of musicians on their stage as The Bridge had sitting in the congregation (those people do play during the services, but there are so many of them that they rotate). What else would you expect from a church where the pastor was a long-time worship leader in the town next door? And Pastor Orlando and most of the other musicians there are friends of ours and are aware of our musical talents; I doubt we'll have any trouble with this church not making us feel supported in whatever musical conquests we might embark upon. We really want to spend a little bit of time with Pastor Orlando and find out what the whole story is on his commitment to the town of Bixby; it sounds like the choice to locate there was anything but random. It sounds like Bixby was carefully selected as the spot for that church because God had laid the area on Pastor Orlando's heart, and if so, then hands-and-feet, give-someone-a-jacket-when-they're-cold kind of ministry is a logical extension of that. We want to share our desire to be involved with a church committed to that kind of stuff and see how that fits with his vision, but I expect him to be really excited about it.

Before we were even through the door of the church afterward, Cathy was making it clear to me that she thought that The Bridge is "it." The place for us. I was a little bit conflicted because we have SO many friends there... that may sound ridiculous, but if it feels like "home" I want it to feel like that because it's God's "home" for us, not just because we have a couple of buddies there. But I can't deny that it immediately felt like home, and I also can't deny that the idea of trying out the other churches on our list suddenly doesn't interest me any more. So The Bridge is going to be seeing a lot more of us! We think it may be home for good. We haven't 100% ruled out the idea that we're confused and God will straighten us out, but it sure feels good to us right now. With the amount of prayer and thought and seeking God that we've put into this, if we're mixed up, I think He'll make it clear to us and quick.

We're excited about this church! Next week they're moving into a new facility... with that comes lots of exciting stuff. We can't wait!

Church Shopping: What We're Looking For

Over the past few weeks as we've been searching for a new home, I keep trying to weigh what we're looking for. I keep thinking about some of the things we're glad to be away from that were at the old church (face it, every church has its warts, and if you left your church, you'd be glad to be away from the warts too!) and things we'd like to see in a new church. We want a church that is reaching out to the community, like Jesus reached out to people... He fed them, He healed them, and He preached the Gospel of His Kingdom to them. He didn't just preach; he met their needs as well. We want a church that reaches out to the world with a priority placed on missions work. We want to physically be part of both of those things if possible. We want a church with praise and worship that we enjoy hearing, that we participate in, and that the whole congregation gets involved in. I personally would like to see people moving around a little bit... not just swaying back and forth and singing, but really physically participating. OK, I'll say it... I dig jumping. :) We want to hear messages that are deeply steeped in the Word of God, and are also very relevant to our lives... that only comes from a pastor who is listening to the Holy Spirit.

We want good programs for our children where they hear the Word and learn about it. We want it to be fun so they will love to come to church, and we want them to learn to worship God in music, giving, and hearing the Word. We want our children to have opportunities to participate in outreach to the community, and when they are old enough, even to have the opportunity to go on short-term missions trips if they want to. We want them to be safe from any kind of abuse by anyone in the church... it's a sad thing to have to think like that, but unless volunteers and staff are properly screened and supervised, the children are vulnerable. We want leaders who are thrilled to see our kids when we arrive, not just because they're our kids, but because they love kids and want to see them learn more about God. But we still want leaders who care enough to learn our kids' names.

We want people to know our names, too. We want to have the opportunity to get to know people, talk to them about the Word, pray with them, but also to just become friends and become part of their lives. We don't want to be faces in the crowd. There was a time in my life when that was exactly what I wanted to be, but I've come to understand that that's not what church is all about. It isn't a cool show you go to once a week; it's a family. If you don't recognize people and they don't recognize you, then it's not family. We went to a church for a year and never saw the same face twice except in the children's department where the same teachers would teach the same class ages on rotation. I never had any idea who I was sitting next to in the service. Too big. Too much. Not human enough. We're all brothers and sisters in the family of God, of course, but I think a local church is about relationships. We need that.

But we'd like people to know our names for another reason, too. Cathy and I are vocalists and songwriters, performers with a skill and people who understand a few things about worshiping God in song. We're not looking to find a church where we can become celebrities, but we do want a place where there is a place for our gifts to be utilized and treasured. We value the gifts God has placed inside of us far too much to squander them, and for far too many years we've flown just under the radar most of the time. It's time for us to be somewhere that we feel we have support in the ministry that God is calling us to. We don't even know exactly what form that might take, but our church family should be supportive.

I'm not saying that these things weren't present at our old church... some of them were and some of them were not so much. But those are some of the things we're keeping our eyes open for. The most frustrating thing in our search is that those things are what we think we want, but what we really want is the direction of the Holy Spirit. And that doesn't come from a checklist. We can't interview someone with our "demands" in hand and see if they fit the bill... because we believe that God wants us to be a part of some church somewhere and His idea of what's right for us may not fit our ideas. So all we can do is continue to pray, continue to have great patience (I wish every church in town would have a service every night, just for a month or so, so it wouldn't take so long to try out the ones we want to try out!), and continue to listen to the voice of God. Maybe He has us on this journey for a reason of His own.

Church Shopping: Guts Church II

We finally made it out to Guts Church for Sunday morning worship today! It was a little bit of a different experience from the Wednesday we visited, but not as much as you might expect.

THIS time, we got there in plenty of time to get everybody checked in and find some seats before the music started. We got a nice parking space, close to where Mikey's class was... it was a completely different arrival situation than the last time, with one exception: as they did the last time, people who greeted us were all VERY friendly. I think we were probably greeted with a smile five or six times before we even got inside the main building! I know those people are there deliberately and it wasn't some spontaneous display of enthusiasm on their part, but it made us feel very welcome, nonetheless.

This time I took notice of the long line of motorcycles all parked in a special area right next to the building. Must have been at least twenty of them. Did I mention yet that this is an edgy church? :)

When we went on a Wednesday night, they put Hannah into the 1-year-old classroom, even though she's 21 months old already. This time they put her into the 2-year-old classroom instead. The teacher this time seemed enthusiastic to see Hannah, which made us feel good about that. :) I noticed something this time that I didn't notice the last time, too... there are video monitors outside the nursery area showing each of the classrooms (1s, 2s & 3s, 4s & 5s). Pretty cool that there is that degree of transparency there, although to be honest, you can't tell much from looking at the monitors... they show the part of the classrooms that is closest to the entry, and most of the activities seem to take place in the other part. So you see a big empty room with tiny little people really far away... but it does give you a window into the classrooms, which is kind of nice.

We went on in and got seats a little closer than the last time, and a little closer to the center, too. The song service did appear to be a little longer, which was cool... it ran almost 15 minutes, which is still shorter than I would like (come on, guys, give us one more song!) but didn't seem truncated like the Wednesday service did. There was a really cool video about someone who came to The Nightmare years ago and became a Christian that night, and who eventually wound up bringing his brother to Guts (he got saved) and then their mom and dad (who apparently also got saved at Guts!) It was a pretty cool video!

The message today was about finding your call and being true to it. The cornerstone Scripture was from the first chapter of Jeremiah, where God calls Jeremiah, Jeremiah tries to make excuses about why he is unable to follow God's call (I'm just a youth!), and God tells him, listen, if you say what I tell you to say and do what I tell you to do, it doesn't matter who you are, because I will do the work. It was a terrific word, especially for people like us who are in a time of transition into a new phase of God's will for us. Cathy and I love to sing, but let's face it... mid- and late thirties is not the prime time of life to embark on a music career. But if we do what God tells us to do and say what He tells us to say, we can't help but succeed!

Cathy is pretty excited about Guts. The atmosphere is very relaxed (like us), and the messages have been right on. Mikey and Hannah both seem to enjoy their classes (in fact, Mikey ran into a friend from Kindergarten in Guts Kids today!), and Mikey is getting something out of the lesson in his area. Another serious positive point about Guts is that it's really close to our house... our old church was a 20-25 minute drive, and this church is about ten minutes max. I'm still not quite sure I'm ready to commit completely to Guts, though. I'm hoping to feel a breath of fresh air and everything falling into place when we find our new home church (I've heard lots of stories like that), but I don't know if that will happen or not. There are about five more churches on our list to visit; if it doesn't hit us like a thunderbolt anywhere and no other church impresses us like Guts does, Guts may well be the place we call home by the first of the year.

Church Shopping: Guts Church/Victory Christian Center

It's Thursday. Last night we didn't go to church... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Rewind a week to the previous Wednesday.

Despite the fact that we really kind of prefer to test-drive churches for the first time on Sunday mornings and then take in a Wednesday night afterward, last Wednesday we visited Guts Church for the first time in a long time. Cathy had been to Guts as a teenager when it was brand new; I've been once with her many years ago (it was in their previous building, and I don't even remember if Mikey was born yet). Guts is probably one of the edgiest churches you'll ever experience. The music is loud rock & roll, the pastor is in-your-face. The building has an almost unfinished look to it, not because it's unfinished (because it's clearly finished) but because that's the way it's intentionally set up. They even run a controversial "haunted house" every October called "The Nightmare" as one of their biggest outreaches of the year. It's certainly an exciting place to be, and the people we spoke to were very friendly!

It was a soggy, rainy night when we got there, and since we were right on the very edge of service time when we arrived, we wound up parking quite a distance from the sanctuary. We trudged that way through the gravel parking lot, and a young lady in a golf cart pulled up and offered us a lift! We took her up on it, and she drove us over to the children's building where Mikey would be. She told us she had been attending Guts for something like seven months, and she LOVES it. Mikey went into his service (where they have a cartoon "lounge" which was showing some Tom & Jerry cartoons, a rock wall, and several other fun diversions for the kids for before & after service time), and then we crossed the street into the main building.

The baby area is in the same building as the sanctuary. It's a castle! I mean, really. It's decorated like a castle. Stone walls, flags and tapestries, the whole nine yards. We got checked in (which wasn't too bad, with help from a friendly volunteer) and went over to drop off our baby girl. This was one of the strangest parts: in the 1-year-old classroom they actually had both halves of the split door closed. We had to knock on the door and then wait for them to come open the top so we could drop Hannah off! The nursery workers didn't particularly look enthusiastic about our arrival, either, even though there didn't appear to be very many babies there (maybe I couldn't see them in the other part of the room).

Anyway, we went into the service, which was already in progress. The praise & worship music was REALLY loud... if you're not a rock fan, you would POSITIVELY NOT like it. But we did. :) It was way too short, though... we walked in a minute or two late, and only actually heard two songs (we didn't know either of them, so we did more listening than singing). We hope that on Sunday the music will last a little longer. After that part, we got to hear a little bit about The Nightmare, which is in the preparation stages right now. Last year they hit a milestone with The Nightmare... a five-digit milestone. They had 10,488 decisions for Christ last year! How many churches that you know can even lie about those kinds of numbers and be taken seriously? What an impact on the community! We saw a video from last year, and then they welcomed us and the other visitors (they gave us three candy bars... each!) and took up the offering, and then Pastor got up to share his message.

What a message! The first part of it really hit home for us... he was talking about people having a possessive attitude toward their home church because it's "my house." That's what we're looking for... a church we can call our house! Our old church, for all of the many years we had been there, never quite felt like a place that we could call ours. We want someplace that feels like home to us.

Anyway, Pastor Scheer went on to compare several Scripture passages about building. Jesus indicated that each of us is building a "house" which is really our life. We can build on a foundation of the Word and have a strong house, or we can not and have a house that won't stand up to opposition. But we don't build alone... God builds alongside of us. One day our building will be tested by fire, and only works done for Christ will survive that. We are to bring God's light into all parts of our life (remember, the "house" is our life). And, in fact, all of our "houses" will one day be within God's house (in the ESV the word translated "rooms" is really more often translated "dwellings"; see note in the margin). It was a message that had me thinking for days afterward.

When the service was over with, Cathy wanted to see if we could get some more "information" about the church... any materials about programs going on there. We were directed to an information booth where two young guys spoke with us at some length, even asking our names and chatting about the church, before they finally told us that the lady who was supposed to be manning the booth was actually away for a few minutes, and they were just there scamming for some gum inside the desk! We thought it was pretty funny, but it was also pretty cool that they treated a couple of strangers who were visiting so warmly, even though it wasn't even their duty to talk with us. They could have just said, this isn't our booth, I'm sorry... but they didn't! And eventually the lady showed up, and she was very friendly and got us the pamphlet that they have about the church.

Hannah seemed to have had a good time... Mikey had a GREAT time and really enjoyed rocking out to their praise & worship service in the Guts Kids building! Overall the experience was very positive; they are a church with a vision and compassion for the local area (actually, including some outlying towns as well) and that resonates with us as a family. Guts doesn't appear to be as missions-centric as World Outreach Church, though.

Sunday morning we all got up and ready to go to Guts for the 11am service, and got partway there when Hannah exhaled the hugest booger I've seen in quite some time. With that kind of congestion, there was a good chance the nursery folks wouldn't want her in class, so we turned around and went home (we were kind of tired anyway). Sunday night, though, we went to Victory Christian Center for a special worship service led by a singer we can't help but love: Kari Jobe. Kari is the sweetest lady you'll ever meet; her music reflects that, and everyone who ever gets to hear her sing or speak seems to just fall in love with her. Anyway, we were definitely late getting to Victory. Victory is a HUGE megachurch... certainly one of the biggest churches in Tulsa, if not THE biggest... and we had some trouble figuring out where the children's area is. The check-in lady in the children's area apparently gave Cathy a little bit of trouble getting checked in; there was something about not enough volunteers in the nursery rooms. To me, that's something that a visitor doesn't need to be privy to. First of all, it's sad for a church that large to lack for volunteers anyway, but that kind of wrangling belongs behind the scenes. It's not the visitor's job to supply nursery workers. But we finally got Hannah checked in, got Mikey up to his children's service (turns out he really wanted to see Kari, although he did enjoy the service he was in!), and got on into the main sanctuary.

I'll suffice it to say that the sanctuary is HUGE. It has been used as a venue for a number of concerts and other events. It's big and it's beautiful, and if we were members there, there is no way we would ever meet even one tenth of the people in the room. Several friends of ours were there and we didn't see any of them. My own mother was at the service, and we never knew it until she called my wife's cell phone when we were on the way home! That's too many people. We want a family, not a county. I think we can consider ourselves friendly toward Victory, but it's not our "house".

So that brings us up to yesterday. It was payday, and we were running low on supplies at home, so Cathy opted for us to go to the grocery store instead of a church service. Which says to me that we probably haven't found "home" yet... if we had, then we would be so excited to be there that we wouldn't want to miss! We haven't hit that level yet.

I also want to point out again something that I find disconcerting: at neither of these churches did the workers in the baby's class seem happy to see us! What does it mean when the nursery volunteers look like they consider your baby an inconvenience? Hannah received the warmest welcome so far at World Outreach Church... the teachers there seemed almost overjoyed that another baby had arrived. THAT'S the kind of nursery workers you need! The ladies at Evangelistic Temple were quite friendly as well. But we almost felt like we had to assert ourselves at both Guts and Victory to get our treasure, our precious little girl, checked into her class. Cathy actually emailed Victory that evening after we got home to tell them about what happened to us when we were trying to check in. It was pretty inexcusable.

Cathy had a dream shortly before we left our old church. A friend of ours who is passionate about hearing from God and who knows a thing or two about dream interpretation, not knowing at all that we were thinking about leaving the church, told us that she thought the dream sounded like it meant that our ministry was trying to go somewhere but we weren't getting any help from the people around us, but that I, Michael, had the determination to find the help that we needed. The support that our ministry needs is a supportive local church to form our base of operations. And my wife and I are determined to find that exact place that God has in store for us.

Church Shopping: World Outreach Church

This morning was our first Sunday morning test-driving World Outreach Church, pastored by Mark & Janet Brazee. We've actually been there a couple of times before; Cathy was in a service back in the 90s when the church was first starting up, and then she and I attended a service a few years ago with my pastor from the church where I grew up (he is a friend of Pastor Brazee), and then we all visited again together the Wednesday before last. I didn't comment on our visit then because frankly, we don't want to judge any church by its Wednesday service alone. Every church puts its best foot forward on Sunday morning, so although we do want to visit churches on Wednesday, we want to make sure we get a Sunday in there, too.

But first about that Wednesday, a week and a half ago. We showed up unannounced (in fact, I think this was even before we had told friends at our old church that we had decided to leave) and immediately found our dear friends Mardy & Jamie. I've known Mardy since we were in choir together in college; Cathy and I got back aquainted with him and met his wife many years later at the church we just left. Mikey got to be friends with their son, who is a year younger than Mikey, and Cathy even babysat for them at one point. Anyway, they've been at WOC for some time now, and we spotted them right off. Jamie was characteristically enthusiastic to see us; for one thing she's an enthusiastic lady! ...and for another thing she and Cathy have been really good friends. So we sat with them through that service.

I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, though. First we had to check in the kids in their classes! Hannah went to the nursery area, where she seemed really ready to go play with the other children. Mikey went upstairs to their beautiful brand new facility for the older kids. He was hooked when he saw the Wiis in there. :)

Anyway, we were with Mardy and Jamie in the adult service, and we had a wonderful time, and enjoyed it very much. When we asked Mikey later what he liked about his experience, he said that "Everyone was so friendly!" so he had a great time, and Hannah apparently had a good time playing and she left happy (actually, she left with one of their board books... I had to go bring it back!) About a week later, I got a follow-up phone call, which was very appreciated (I talked about that here). Then this morning we loaded up again for our first full-fledged Sunday morning service!

The church was pretty packed for the Sunday morning service. At the same time as they were expanding their children's areas, they were expanding the sanctuary as well, and they clearly needed it! It was Missions Sunday, and when I heard that, I knew Cathy was going to really love it; foreign missions are something that has been strong on her heart ever since her (Southern Baptist) childhood. I have a love for missions too, but not nearly to the degree as she does. And as is obvious from their name, World Outreach Church is definitely a missions-focused church! We got to hear some exciting testimony from a missionary that the church supports, and then Pastor Brazee spoke on missions for a while. He talked about the four men who carried their friend to Jesus to be healed, and then he brought out a table, had a man lie on it (to represent "Mongolia") and then called up a young lady who is about to go on the mission field to Mongolia. He told us that she couldn't carry "Mongolia" to Jesus (he called up another man to be "Jesus") without help; she can only carry one corner of the table by herself. But one by one, he called up people to be her team back home; the people back home who would be praying for her; and the people back home who would give so that she would have funds to stay out on the field (Pastor Brazee was visibly overcome, and briefly unable to speak, when he talked about missionaries who have to leave their mission field because of lack of funds). Then the four people each lifted one corner of the table to carry "Mongolia" to "Jesus", and I never thought I would be so moved to see four people carry a guy on a table across a stage.

Meanwhile, Mikey was also having Missions Sunday in his class. Mikey told us a story afterward about a crusade in Argentina where 4,206 people received Jesus at once! There were so many hands, Mikey told us, that from the front you couldn't even see the hands in the back. Once again everyone was friendly to Mikey, and he has nothing at all bad to say about the experience.

I've got nothing bad at all to say about either visit either; the building is beautiful, the people are friendly, and actually we've got several friends that already go there so it's not even entirely like a different church. We love their emphases on the children and on outreach, both foreign missions like they talked about today, and local outreach, which we understand happens quite frequently. If we should decide that this is our new church, the one thing that I'll need to get used to is the music. I'm saying that knowing that our friends Mardy and Jamie are heavily involved in the music, and they may well read this, so I hope they won't be offended, because I'm just being real here. The music is well-performed and clearly heartfelt (in fact, this morning the lady who plays percussion... shakers, tambourines, that kind of thing... was nearly dancing right there in place, she was so into it), but it's not so much my "flavor". I'll have to get used to the style (which is kind of part 80s charismatic, part black Gospel... actually very similar to the music in the church I grew up in) in order to be able to lose myself in worship there. That is by no means a deal-breaker; I learned long ago that the music and the worship that occur are completely separate things, and you can worship whether the music is your "thing" or not (heck, you don't even need music at all in order to worship God!) so if this is where God is calling us, I'll get used to it and have no trouble during worship. Cathy has no problem with it at all. Am I being petty? I hope not. Music is a big part of my life (I majored in music composition in college, for crying out loud!) so it looms large for me. It may turn out that it's just a hurdle I have to overcome. But if it is, it's a hurdle that I've put in my own way, not something that World Outreach Church has created. What they've created is clearly a vibrant, active, involved, caring, friendly church body. I think I could handle a couple of Charismatic two-step songs in exchange for the chance to be a part of something like that!

Church Shopping: Follow-Ups

We didn't go to church last Wednesday... we already visited one church for the first time on a Wednesday (World Outreach Church) and we really want our first time at new churches to be a Sunday. Plus, Cathy and I were both really wiped out this week. So we stayed home. But then Thursday at about 2:30pm my phone rang, and it was someone from World Outreach calling to say hi, thanks for visiting with us, do you have any questions, that kind of stuff. It was a really cool conversation. Then not more than ten minutes later, I got an EMAIL from Evangelistic Temple church, welcoming us and thanking us for coming, the same sort of stuff. THEN: Thursday night we were at home when the doorbell rang. It was a lady from E.T. who had brought us a bag with a 2-liter Coca Cola, some Orville Redenbacher popcorn, and some literature about the church in it! She even prayed with us that we would find the right church for our family. It was awesome! WOC and ET churches, you're doin' it RITE!

We're really looking forward to making our first Sunday visit to WOC this Sunday morning coming up!

Church Shopping: Evangelistic Temple

This was our first Sunday morning visiting away from our old church. We actually visited World Outreach Church last Wednesday and planned to go back today, but Cathy's cousin Dee-Wee emailed us to tell us that her son Michael would be performing at the end of the service at their church, Evangelistic Temple, so we visited there instead! (It was on our list anyway, so we would have visited within the next few weeks.) The youth from the church had gone to a national competition with some drama, music, photography, and other kinds of expressions of their faith in the arts, and Michael had been part of two competitions: a drama skit and a comedy rap song. The drama team was scheduled to perform; the "rap group" kind of snuck in at the very end. :)

Dee-Wee (that's a nickname I accidentally invented for her several years ago... long story. Her real name is Melody, but most everyone calls her Dee-DEE, not Dee-WEE) met us at the door when we got there. We got the baby checked in at the nursery, and the ladies there were very friendly and cordial. Hannah seemed a little bit nervous, but she was OK once she spotted the toys! Once she was settled in, Dee-Wee took us for the two-dollar tour of all the places around the church where the youth meet, the kids meet, the little coffee area, that sort of thing. It was kind of fun to get to see the facility! By then it was almost time for the service to start, so we went back to the main sanctuary.

At E.T. they have an early "traditional" service and a later "contemporary" service; we were there for the contemporary service. In the lobby we found Dee-Wee's husband (Lee-Wee), and we ran into Krista, the sister of my roommate from my ORU days. So we felt very much surrounded by friends. The associate pastor, who was to be speaking that morning, even spotted us and came over to say hello! We felt very welcome, and very at home! (Cathy and I had both been to E.T. before, although it has been years and years for both of us, so it wasn't a totally alien environment, either.)

The service was wonderful. It looked like maybe they were having some sound issues at the beginning of the music time; I saw a guy scrambling around checking some cables or direct boxes or something. But the worship was well-done and certainly heartfelt. Not quite as slick of a production as what we've been used to at the much larger churches we've attended, but I've absolutely heard MUCH worse, and I had no trouble joining in (the sound problems got fixed fairly quickly, as well). The sanctuary was maybe half-full by the end of the music portion; at the very beginning it was really sparse. I suspect that was partly because people were chatting out in the lobby area, which is really just part of the same large room with a partition in the way; you're almost in the service even when you're in that lobby. The musicians did a great job; as a music-oriented person I actually enjoyed watching a lady who was playing congas and some other percussion in the background. I thought it was cool that she had a tambourine mounted on a stand on the ground and she was playing it with a kick pedal. :)

Cathy and I LOVED the message. He started off talking about the "cash for clunkers" program that has just ended (bring in your old dilapidated car to trade in for a new one with a government refund for the "clunker"), but then he turned it around to "grace for clunkers"! The idea was that God has taken our messed up lives and given us something infinitely valuable in exchange. It was really inspiring; I was impressed at how evangelistic it was in nature, but still very relevant and useful to the already-converted. I thought he did an excellent job.

When the message was over and announcements and the offering were done, we were treated to the youth drama performance, which had won third place at the national competition. Here's the video of the performance at nationals:



Dee-Wee's son is Satan and the beginning, and Jesus at the end. Now THAT'S a conversion story!

The first service didn't get to see the next part. Michael is one-third of a tongue-in-cheek rap act called "Creepers 4 Christ," and somehow they got the associate pastor to let them on stage. :) This is their performance which won FIRST place in the national competition!



After that, all that the associate pastor could say was something to the effect of, "If Pastor ever hears about this, I'll know it was YOU guys that told him!" It was really funny!

The pros of E.T.: we have family and friends there already. They appear to have very active programs for children and teenagers. They have some outreach programs that appear to be fairly active as well. The message was excellent, and the people were super friendly to us. This is no fly-by-night church; they've been there a long time and there's no reason to suspect that they won't be there for years to come. There were several visitors this morning besides us (which probably means people are inviting their friends), and they baptized several kids and adults this morning, one woman who had received Jesus right in the church just weeks ago.

The cons of E.T. (for us): mainly that it has a little bit of a throwback-to-the-70s feel to it. The building isn't brand-spanking-new, and it feels lived-in. That is by no means a reason to write this church off, and we haven't scratched it off our list by any means! But it's a little more shall we say "retro" than we're used to.

Final impression: I think we could be very happy having E.T. as our home church. There are some bells that rang for us at World Outreach that didn't ring here (I'll blog World Outreach after we get to a Sunday service there), but I would highly recommend E.T. to anyone who asked me about it. It's a wonderful place, and we look forward to visiting again there from time to time.

Jones In Motion

Yesterday was a big day. We got in touch with some of the people from our church and told them we were saying goodbye.

We're not moving to another state or even another city... just another church. The reasons are varied, and honestly there is no one single reason that would be enough to make such a drastic decision. I've been attending this church since October of 1996 (I had moved back to Tulsa the summer before) with a one-year stint at another church when we were having some "people" difficulties at our church home. So it's not a decision you make lightly, ending a 12-year relationship with a church body, and it's really hard. If I wrote each of our reasons for making this decision on a card and handed you the cards, one at a time, as you read each one you would say, "Well, that's not so bad. You can deal with that," and I would agree with you. But when we were done, you'd be holding a pretty sizable stack of cards. It's definitely a camel-with-many-straws-on-his-back situation. We love the people at our now-former church, and we have great respect for the pastor and staff, but taking all factors into account, it's just time.

I'm not naming here the church we're leaving, although if you really wanted to know and didn't know already, you could easily enough find it in the archives. Like any other church, there are some things our old church is good at and other things that it's not good at, and a big part of the reason for moving on is that our priorities as a family have shifted and we need to find somewhere that better fits what we feel God is calling us to do. And that's the last thing I'm going to say about why we're leaving the old church, because it's a great place and many good things (including a HUGE amount of Bible knowledge for me and my wife!) have come out of there, and I have no reason to or intention to say anything at all bad about it. It's an excellent place to go and learn God's Word. I would HIGHLY recommend it for someone who needs a really solid Bible foundation; it's just short of going to a Bible school where you pay tuition! I won't talk that church down, but I will be giving my impressions of some of the places we visit over the next couple of months. We have a short list of churches we're curious about, and I'll share what we think about those churches as we visit. And by about Christmas time, I hope we've found someplace to spend the next twelve, twenty-four, or fifty years!