Come Alive! New Testament Church, part 2

I find the church easily; it is about 25 minutes from my home. It is a fairly new building set back less than a quarter of a mile from a main highway, among fields and woods. I found out later, from a brochure the assistant pastor gave me, that the church had purchased what was the former home of the Medford Farms Liquor and Deli, along with twenty acres of land that include farmland, a creek, and a pond. The cream-colored building looks slightly barnlike, although you don’t see many barns with a slim white steeple. I have arrived on a gorgeous autumn morning; signs in front of a cornfield to the side of the parking lot announce an upcoming free fall festival.

The road into the church parking lot also leads to a fairly large house set back a bit, and I drive there first. This building, it turns out, is the headquarters for Creation Festivals and Creation Concerts. There is also a picnic area sheltered by one of those big white tentlike structures you can rent for parties, and a very large children’s play area filled with multicolored apparatus. I head back to the church parking lot.

I see people leaving and entering the church, and I was right in thinking that it would have been okay to wear jeans to this church. But not everyone is dressed casually; there are also men in suits and women in dresses. When I enter the small lobby, a few minutes before the starting time of 10:30 AM,  someone hands me a bulletin and greets me. Inside the sanctuary, I find a seat about halfway to the front. A few people are milling around, visiting and talking. The seats are wooden padded chairs attached to each other, quite comfortable, arranged in a semicircle around the front platform.

The sanctuary could probably seat about 250. The wall behind the main platform has a decorative screen of wooden slats, in the center of which is a large circle with a cross and two doves. There is a traditional communion table in front of this, holding a golden cross and two candles, and the pulpit is front and center. There are flower arrangements. The American flag and the Christian flag are on stands off to the right, and the equipment for the praise band is to the left. Television screens hang from the ceiling throughout, and during the pre-service time they display a picture of two lit candles.

A couple sitting a few rows behind me catch my eye and wish me a hearty good morning. Soon after that, a young woman stops by and says hello and hands me a piece of folded paper. This is to let us know that Pastor Appreciation Day is coming up, and there will be a cake and coffee reception honoring the four pastors of this church after the second service. People are invited to donate cards, money, poems, and prayers to be placed in baskets to give to each pastor.

One of the pastors introduces himself, but I didn't catch the name. He says he’s glad I’m visiting, and then leaves momentarily, coming back carrying a large coffee mug filled with candy, herbal tea, and a packet of hot cocoa mix, gift-wrapped in cellophane and ribbon. The church’s slogan (A Place for You) and its URL are imprinted on the front of the mug. He also gives me a little brochure about the church, and asks me to fill out the visitor’s card inside and drop it into the offering basket.

The couple who had greeted me earlier come over and introduce themselves. It turns out that this is only their second Sunday at the church! They came last week and liked it so much that they came back again for the evening service, and now they are back for the second week, already urging newcomers to attend. They are quite friendly and happy. That’s rather impressive, for the church to have made such a big impression on these people so quickly.

I look through the bulletin. Inserts advertise a children’s program called The Bigsby Show, a women’s retreat, and the Fall Festival. The first entry in the announcements section asks everyone to keep the leadership and congregation of Lord of Life Lutheran Church in their prayers. It’s not clear to me if this is an indication that the Lutheran church is having some kind of problem, or if it is just Come Alive’s custom to ask God to bless other congregations.

There are very detailed prayer requests in the bulletin, in most cases naming people by both first and last name, and asking for specific things. Hey – I found a mention of the Jacksons! I read a request that we pray “for strength and peace for Vanessa Jackson and her family, and for favor with the authorities leading to an early release.” I’m glad to see that the church is still concerned about her – more thoughts on that topic in the epilogue.

The praise band picks up their instruments. There are nine members in all – four guitarists, two keyboard players, one drummer, and two singers. A pastor welcomes everyone, and the band begins.

There are about 120 people in the sanctuary, and almost everyone stands throughout the music. This would be okay, except that the music goes on for the next 45 minutes. I can walk all day, but I hate standing for more than 20 minutes. A few of the older folks remain seated, and I feel like joining them, but I don’t want to throw my lot in with the geriatric crowd just yet. Still – 45 minutes of standing! Even the Greek Orthodox folks didn’t ask me to do that.

Lyrics are shown on the television screens. The singing seems a bit tepid to me, but it’s hard to tell, because the band is so loud that perhaps I just can’t hear anyone else singing; I can barely hear myself.

After the first half hour I am confirmed in my belief that praise music is awfully dated. I remember standing and singing these same songs in the seventies. We end the music session with that very nice arrangement of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and “O the Wonderful Cross” that is deservedly popular. Charles Wesley’s gorgeous 18th-century lyrics still win the day.

Next there is a break for saying hello and welcoming each other (although an awful lot of that seemed to go on before the singing, too). The pastor who gave me the mug stops by again, and asks how I learned about the church. I am hesitant to mention the Jacksons, which might be a touchy subject, so I tell him I found the church in the yellow pages. That is half true. He tells me I should come back for the evening service, which features more music than the morning service, and more intense music. He says this as though it is a good thing.

People are moving around now, chatting. This break seems to last for an awfully long time, although it is probably only about ten minutes. I can see that this is a close-knit group, with lots to say to each other.

The pastor calls us back to our seats for the offering. We read aloud together a statement about how we are giving because “God’s work is great and extensive and deserves my full-hearted support. I give expecting God to do might things in the midst of His people.” Then we read aloud two Old Testament texts, Exodus 35:21 and Nehemiah 4:19.

This last passage reminds me of our fledgling Jesus people church in Carbondale, Illinois. The founders of the group, trying to settle on a name, decided to choose by opening the Bible at random (“letting God choose for us”). The page they opened to contained Exodus 35:21; the heading of the page was “The people’s offering.” So that became our name, the one we used when we incorporated as a 501c3 organization.

Unfortunately, we were unaware not only of the embarrassing history of what happens when people try to get guidance by opening the Bible at random, but also shockingly ignorant of modern history – no one in the group noticed the similarity between a name like The People’s Offering and a name like The People’s Republic of China. (Readers of David Lodge’s comic novel Changing Places may recall that students at his fictional California university were engaged in a struggle to set up the People’s Garden and the People’s Fishpond, among other efforts to establish a Marxist utopia.) Naming our church The People’s Offering sounded might suspicious to plenty of outsiders; little did they know that the name was indicative only of our cheerful ignorance.

Ah, memories. At Come Alive! the offering is taken using purple velvet bags on sticks. After the offering, the pastor asks a couple to come up and speak. They are adopting an 11-year-old girl from China, who was in the US recently for medical treatment. She had been here for medical treatment earlier, when she was five years old, and this was a follow-up visit. The couple are part of a team that helps children come to the US for care, and they feel strongly that God wants them to adopt this girl. They show a video slideshow of the girl’s visit, and she is adorable! One of the pastors (I can’t tell who is who among the four pastors of this church) asks us to give to another offering to help defray the $20,000 adoption costs. He notes that he and his wife adopted a Korean girl many years ago, and they now couldn’t imagine their family without her. So the velvet offering bags come around again, and I am glad to contribute to this cause.

Then a young woman wearing jeans and a jean jacket sings a solo, with prerecorded instrumental accompaniment. By now it is 11:35, and we are just getting to the sermon!

One of the pastors (I think he is the one who gave me the mug, but I’m not positive) asks us to open our Bibles to the first chapter of Colossians. This is a church where everyone brings a Bible; there are none in the pews. He is preaching on “the hope that God has for the saints.” This is going to be a sermon on heaven, which is actually a fairly unusual topic for a sermon these days.

First, he points out how important it is that the Colossians showed love for all the saints, even though some of them were probably not very lovable. He asks us if we realize that there are saints in all denominations, and if we know that we are expected to love them all. He says that lack of love among Christians has probably done the most harm to the body of Christ throughout history, which I think may be true. (Anti-Semitism is in the running for the title of Most Harm, though – again, my opinion.)

This man has a clear, conversational style of speaking, and explicates the passage at length. He says that thinking about heaven is more practical than most people assume, because it affects our actions on earth. He mentions that common fear that people have that heaven sounds boring, and suggests that, whatever it is like, it will be filled with purpose, and will not be boring. The sermon is about twenty minutes long, so we end at 12:15 with a simple benediction.

I stand around for a while, and then head to the lobby again. I stop in the bathroom on the way out, and a young woman notices my visitor’s mug and tells me how much she loves the church – she has been attending for twenty years. So the place has been recommended enthusiastically by both old and new members, which is rather impressive. I can say right now that in my year of visiting churches, this is the only time this happened - spontaneous, unprompted recommendations of the church by current members.

I peek into the sanctuary again. It looks as though no one has left. They are still standing around visiting, and no doubt most of them will be back again tonight. This appears to be a rather small but tight-knit group of people who really, really like their church. And they are involved in medical ministry, prison ministry, nursing home ministry, which is a big plus for me. It’s not the style of service I prefer, but there seems to be something here that other people love.

So what’s with this church and the starving boys?