What a cultural shock the last couple of days have been. Vanessa and I have ventured into NYC (Brooklyn) for the first time in our lives – and we foolishly did it in a car. I rescind all the statements I’ve made in the last few years about missing city traffic. It’s not so much the congestion, as the use of motorized vehicles as a weapon or an expression of your personal emotions! There’s a lot of unresolved anger and aggression out there.
I know I promised the next time I wrote, it would be about the book Simple Church, that I’m reading. I’m so behind, though, in just reporting about our church experiences, that I really to need to catch up on that, first.
We had Mikaela with us last weekend and kept explaining to her that just going to 3 worship services was a nice break from the previous weekend in Charleston. I’m not sure she bought it. Saturday and Sunday, we attended 3 services in 2 churches, 2 ½ hours apart.
Saturday night, we were in D.C. to attend the service of National Community Church [ www.nationaltheaterchurch.com ] . This is a shining example of “niche” marketing of a church ministry in a community. Their printed materials say that over 70% of attenders at National are in their 20s and 30s. My observation was that it was mostly on the lower end of that range – young professionals, lots of singles. National Community has a clearly defined strategy – to use the highly used and safe D.C. subway system (The Metro) as the map for reaching the city. Specifically, they intend on having a worship service established at every movie theater on the transit route around the D.C. area. Everyone they’re trying to reach, rides the trains and everyone go to movies!
The one exception in their strategy is a coffee house location for the Saturday night service – this is the service we attended. But, even Ebenezer’s coffee house is located around the corner from Union Station. The coffee house is owned by the church. It is used as a beach-head into the neighborhood. They don’t play Christian music or keep Bibles on the tables, they just have a presence in the neighborhood, run it on Christian principles, staff it with Christians, and allow a few very subtle flyers on the door announcing events. The worship service is held in a small room (I’d guess 30 x 40 feet) in the basement. It’s finished out in the usual upscale warehouse style – lot’s of shiny metal and painted black duct-work and ceilings. The small room was packed out with probably 150-200 people. Vanessa and I were the token “old people” in the service.
On Sunday morning, we got up early and drove 2 ½ hours out into Virginia, to Spring Hill Baptist Church [ http://www.springhillbaptist.org/ ]. This is a 150 year old congregation that has had the same pastor for 14 years. Dan came to Spring Hill fresh out of seminary.
He’d done a fantastic job in leading the church to reach it’s immediate community and to see the opportunity in neighboring communities. Spring Hill sits in an old, rural neighborhood. After first adding services, to reach more people, they started adding locations.
By the way, Dan says they have determined they are really good with groups of 100-150 attendance, so each time a service has that many attending, they make plans to add a service. They old, original church site has 3 Sunday morning services. They have added 2 other locations and are about to launch still another.
The first service we attended was on the edge of Charlottesville, in a movie theater. The setting, itself was great for a church – plenty of parking, seating, and the big screen is already in place. They had a nice, acoustic Praise Band and the message was delivered by video (disk, not live-feed). It is a year-old site and had about 85 people attending (including Dan’s wife and kids who have made this group their place of worship).
We then headed over to the “mother ship” location. What a contrast! Here was what felt like the original 1800s era building, complete with uncomfortable pews, singing from a hymn book (all verses) and a congregation of nearly all senior adults. Dan later explained that most of the younger families attend the earlier services, some at this location, many at the satellite sites. The 11:00 am service we attended is the only “traditional music” service held at Spring Hill.
I’m going to continue write, but am quickly realizing that my “lessons learned” list is too long for always including in the blog writing. I’ll probably write something up and have it available for download or distribution when we’re back home.
Last night, Vanessa and I went to Brooklyn Tablernacle. Picture this – about 5,000 people going to church on a Tuesday night (every week) for a prayer service! It was an amazing experience. We may go back there on Sunday for a worship service.
Talk to you, soon.
Ken
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