With much of our Youth staff, and our Junior High Youth off on a retreat, I had the weekend off from Rush Hour, so I took the opportunity to book a show at
Java Monkey in Decatur, GA, and visit family in the Atlanta area.
As a firm believer in the importance of the local church, I absolutely LOVE visiting different gatherings of believers when I'm out of town, so I'm going to participate in the
SUNDAY SETLISTS as a worshiper, instead of the leader.
Right off the bat, let me give few important note for churches:
be sure people can
find you, unless you'd rather not have any attend.
I had every intention of visiting a particular body of believers: a "missional", "emerging", "neo-charismatic" church that's implementing the whole "ancient-future" worship thing spiked my interest - I wondered what that looked like. I didn't get to, however - what was to be a 15 minute drive, turned into an hour and a half, and most of the time I was in almost walking distance of the place - it was just THAT hard to find! Maybe next time, but here's a clue to pastors and church planters: churches should be where people are.
Having missed their service entirely, I drove to a church I've been to before. Though I love the place, and I hate to admit this, as a "worshiper", I struggled a bit. Clearly this was a body who was very expectant that God was going to move there - the church's response to what the Holy Spirit was doing in their hearts was beautiful. However, observing what was taking place on stage, I wondered if the "guard" had very recently changed - this was a VERY different worship service from what I remember. Yes, all of the songs were familiar, lyrically solid, and performed with excellence (well, musically they were - the vocals were at times a bit distracting), but the facial experessions of those on stage seemed dour - distracted. Those leading stared hard at the music on their music stands, and performed, but I saw only momentary sparks of passion - I was never encouraged to engage, I was never given any truth to respond to, I was not given an example of engaged worship from the stage to give me "permission" to worship as I did. Yes, I closed my eyes and gave Him my whole heart, because God deserves it, but at times it was in spite of the worship team - not because they were effectively leading us. The good news was that not everything had changed: the pastor brought a powerful "Kingdom" word, so I came away challenged and blessed by the morning message.
That evening, my experience was quite different. My sister-n-law has been attending, and now sometimes volunteering as a vocalist at,
Midtown Community Church in Downtown Atlanta. Having long been familiar with the ministry of their parent church,
Grace Fellowship Church in Snellville, I've been interested in what was going on at Midtown for quite some time (I actually suggested that my sister-n-law visit it before she even left for college). If you're in the Atlanta area, below the age of 40, and looking for a body of Kingdom-minded worshipers to plug into, may I suggest you visit there. Rather, skip visiting and become a member.
First, the building - don't know what happened to the church that used to use this building, but Midtown have done a great job of remodelling without wasting money - keeping in simple, artistic, and quite beautiful: a "rock band" set-up on stage, but lit candles hanging from the ceiling on stage, and old fashion pews for sitting.
Unhindered led, as they often do, the night I was visiting: one
original song before the teaching (well, adding in the spontaneous worship, it could've been 2 or 3 songs - it was a LONG song). Then a Bible-saturated baseball bat to the face message on the Kingdom of God and God's purposes, followed by
2 more original songs, and "
You are My Strength", the old Hillsong tune, played with some...erm, rather A LOT of MUSCLE.
Here we had a room of people giving God their everything (honestly, at one point I thought I might faint), singing powerful songs of worship that most all of us JUST LEARNED in the moment (entirely unfamiliar to me, at least) at the TOP of our LUNGS. The words spoken from stage were dretched with Scripture and spoken with conviction, the directives given to worship gave freedom to all present, and the example set by the leadership of the church was of 'unhindered' worship. And most of the songs were entirely unfamiliar until we walked into those doors.
On top of that, I also made a few new friends, I do believe.
I think God taught me a few more things this Sunday (this has been a year of lessons, so far, and yes, I'm taking notes). It was a WONDERFUL Sunday to be in the pew for a change, and not on the stage.
Thank You, Jesus. I needed that.