I think I finally have a solid regular blog readership. Or maybe my mom just checks back here WAY too much. Either way, I’ve been getting a good number of hits the past few weeks, so thanks for actually stopping by. It’s nice to know that I’m not just typing words and posting photos into oblivion.
Today I woke up to all kinds of uncooperativeness. My body was most definitely not wanting to be cooperative. I have the “Fresher Flu” to thank for that. I think that waking up sick ranks near the top of my list of most terrible ways to greet the sunshine. It gets the honors of third place following the “Oh crap, I have a test today!” rise and shine and the “You have 30 seconds to be dressed and on the line” football camp morning greeting.
The other half of today’s uncooperativeness was Roehampton’s brilliant decision to kick everyone of us international students out of the Magazine Writing class that we all signed up for. However, the department head told me that if we had simply emailed him in advance, this could have been all sorted out for us. Ironic, since at Biola we were told to just have a list of classes ready and go “wing it.” Huh.
Either way, I’m sure my classes will end up working out just fine. Hopefully I’ll even be able to get credit for the work I do here. Hopefully…
On the upside of things, I did manage to snag a job at a very, very cool local church here. So hopefully that will help out my bleeding wallet a little.
And dude, this church… Oy. I’ve been there twice. But man is it sick! When I visit a church for the first time, there are a number of things I look for, but some that register on the Mike-O-Meter right off the bat are: Worship, community, genuineness, and momentum.
Worship is a huge factor in “church shopping” for me. It’s also very depended on a lot of other factors in the church (including community, genuineness, and momentum). It doesn’t have to include a big band and sweet lights and great sound, but there are many times when those things can work for it. More than anything, it should be a genuine experience, not something that needs to be “felt” or “forced”. The main outcome of worship should be you praising God. Score one for HTB.
A church is a community. People should meet and greet and then actually become one body – just like the overly used verses in Romans and 1 Corinthians state (it’s sad that I had to look that up). If you go to HTB, you’re in a small group. Bam. You’re involved. Whether or not you want to be. I like that.
Genuineness is one aspect that a lot of churches are missing out on. I’ve been to way too many church services that are self-promoting, agenda-pushing, or just plain cheesy. When I worked at Central Christian, I could never figure out why it didn’t really click as “the church” for me. It had great worship, a decent community, extremely well done multimedia, and leaders who weren’t afraid to take chances. Then one day it clicked: They weren’t genuine. Every time there was a meeting or an idea pitched the central focus was on numbers. “How can we get more people to this?” “How can we raise more money for this cause?” “What was the attendance last week?” etc… (Side note: none of these are bad things. I admire Central’s ability to reach out to enormous groups of people. I’m also not questioning anyone’s motives there. I know for a fact that all of them are very Christ-centered people. This is just my subjective impression on how it comes off to me when all is said and done). Never once did I hear “How can we reach out to ____?” “What can we do for _____?” “How can we change ____’s lives today?” At times it seemed more like a business than a church. Definitely not the case with HTB.
Momentum is something that lots of churches aspire to, but few actually have (Side note: this is a personal preference, even more so than the attributes before). Momentum is what happens when a church is on the ball. They’re the one creating new trends, new ideas, new ways of ministry that other churches follow. This can range from a new style of worship (think Hillsong United) to a completely new ministry (think Toms Shoes). The church is always one step ahead of the game; by the time one of its trends has become “normalized”, it’s already moved on to the next thing. Like the Macintosh of churches so to speak. Back in the day CRSM had momentum up the wazoo. I still think it’s got a little left in it.
So those are the four most important traits in a church to me. And HTB met all of them and then some. They seem to have an awesome community outreach and way solid teaching. Just an awesome place to be. In the end, I think that the church’s first job should be doing church. And HTB does church well.
Rollout.
Mikerophone 