HOME-TOWN CHURCHES

First, a huge thanks to you who were praying with Vanessa for no rain on last Thursday – the weather was dry and cloudy – perfect for getting Jennifer’s wedding portrait pictures done. In the old country church we went to – the one my mother grew up in – we only had to contend with one small rattlesnake. He was curled up inside the building, but fortunately the church snake killer came along and took care of it for us.

I hope you guys had a great day at church. We really miss being with you. It’s been a good week with our families. We’ve been back and forth between the families (about 55 miles apart), but mostly with Ken’s. My brother has a beautiful lake house and we pretty much spent the time at his place eating, cleaning up, and then eating again. This has not been a good week for our plan to lose a little weight while we’re gone.

Tonight we came to Weatherford, which is Vanessa’s home town. The next few days will be a little more relaxed than the last few. We’ll drive Mikaela to DFW airport on Thursday for her flight back to NC. Vanessa and I will drive to Oklahoma City to visit Life Church this weekend. If you want to check them out, their web address is www.lifechurch.tv . They are probably the most video-driven ministry I’m aware of. They are a multi-site ministry where you apparently never know from Sunday to Sunday where the preacher will be preaching live and where you’ll be seeing a live video feed.

Oak Street Baptist Church – Graham, Texas – Ken’s home church
I’m developing great empathy for people who worship at early services. We attended the 8:15 service and I was really struggling to stay focused. Oak Street is a church of about 300 in attendance that could be considered a traditional one in some ways, though they use a band and contemporary music in worship.

Just a few observations:

• If you’re going to have a lightly attended service (75 people in a room with close to 350 chairs) – it’s better to rope off the side sections and force the crowd to the middle. Oak Street didn’t do this and the result was a feeling that you were sitting alone in a big room, with just a handful of people within sight.
• They have a great new worship leader who led from a beautiful acoustic baby grand piano. Good music (mostly stuff we do at Crossroads) with a guitar, bass player and drummer in the band. The poor drummer was really good, but they had him in a box – literally! The drum shield was a full enclosure with just a small opening above him. I think it’s obvious they’d had complaints about the volume of the drums, but the “fix” resulted in a muffled sound that was a real waste of drumming talent.
• Praise Singers on both teams – I wish I had a photo of the singers we watched this morning to show you. Two out of three of them looked like they’d rather be anywhere but where they were. They were so uncomfortable and unemotional that it was almost humorous. It was certainly a distraction. Crossroads singers, thank you for smiling and engaging the congregation in worship.
• The pastor is a great communicator and excellent Bible teacher. He preached a good sermon for the setting and crowd. The family discussion as we were leaving was that the message assumed the listeners have been Christians a long time and have a big Christian vocabulary. So, it made me think again about who our target audience is and are my message making too many assumptions about the knowledge level of our spiritual seekers and new Christians?
  
  Northside Baptist Church – Weatherford, Texas
  Northside is a growing church (about 1,000 total in 2 services) that is much more traditional than Ken’s home church. They are in a rapidly growing city and it’s one of those situations where the church will grow unless you’re completely incompetent in what you do.
  
  Only a pastor and his family would choose to go to a church business meeting while on vacation. The leadership softened up the crowd by feeding us Texas barbecue brisket before the meeting started. It was informational to see how this church handled a presentation of a recommendation to build a $3 million dollar children’s building, with a recommendation also that they open a $10 million dollar line of credit that will be used to build a future worship center. Northside is obviously in a different financial league than Crossroads. They have a huge senior adult group that is made up of tithers and sacrificial givers to building programs. Most of their buildings have been built without a special fundraising campaign.
  
  I thought it was very wise of the pastor to make the comment that even though they could constitutionally proceed with the building program with a 51% vote, he would not move ahead unless the vote was considerably over 90%. Obviously, they value unity in major decisions.

Have a great week and I’ll probably not do another update until next Sunday night or Monday. I love you and I’m praying for you and what God is doing in our lives.