Dig in Deep

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted about our transition, and I feel like it’s time for me to open up about what’s happened in the past two months.

The first Sunday after we had left Faith Community, we were ready to start visiting around. I had been wanting, for a couple of years, to take a few weeks off so I could just see what some other churches were doing. Being a worship leader doesn’t really give you a lot of time to do that. But after we lost a couple of folks from our worship team a couple of years ago, it got harder to take some significant time off. (Quick note to other worship leaders reading this: take some time off! Go see what others are doing! If you put it off, it’ll never happen!)

Then, my first Sunday of not having any commitments, one of our kids got sick. So we all stayed home. Bummer!

The next couple of Sundays were interesting. We visited a church in Loganville that I had heard good things about. Pretty solid doctrine, good musical style, and the church has been growing pretty steadily. The sermon was good. The main problem I had with it though, was that it was quite a “one-man show.” Meaning, the pastor was also the worship leader. There was another guy who was playing guitar, and led singing on a couple of the songs, but the pastor led most of the singing and had a firm grip on the wheel. The pastor also kept talking about himself – what he wanted to do in Loganville, how he needed help doing what God wanted, etc. Overall, not necessarily a situation I’d want to put myself into…

The following Sunday, we were in Manhattan – I had been sent on a business trip, and Amy came along. We visited a church there that was pretty cool. Kind of like a North Point wanna-be (or whatever standard they would have used for themselves), only they weren’t anywhere near 100% in their execution. But they had four services on Sunday in Manhattan (though their space was limited in seating to probably about 400, and on Sunday evening when we went there were about 150), and had just started a satellite campus in Jersey City.

At this point, though, I began questioning the whole approach. On our way up the elevator (yes, this church was in a ballroom on the 6th floor), there was a greeter and another visitor in there with us. Some things the visitor said made me think she just didn’t know how to take all of this in, like she was quite skeptical. I’m not sure what brought her to that church that night (she was alone), but I kept thinking about how the entire production was probably failing to capture her spiritual imagination.

The music was pretty good by church standards, but she probably couldn’t figure out why everyone was so excited – it wasn’t nearly as good as anything you’d hear on the radio (the fact that they sound mix was off probably wan’t helping). Besides, as “relevant” as the music style was (it was pretty much exactly what I would do), her preference in music was probably a bit more hip than anything they could have tried to accomplish. (Though their rendition of Switchfoot’s “This is Your Life” was decent.)

The sermon was a good presentation about how God has a purpose for you (it was basically the outline of the Purpose-Driven Life), but there was very little about it that was mysterious. It was presented based on reason, with some humor mixed in. Typical sermon. I’m thinking, she’s probably here to see if God shows up, and all we tend to do is put on a show and try to convince everyone that we’re right and that we’re talented. It started making me skeptical of the entire approach.

The following Sunday, we made plans to visit another church where some friends have been attending. It was one of the better ones we had visited. It was the first Sunday for the new pastor. The people were genuinely friendly, and the music was great (the only one of the three we visited that didn’t incorporate a praise team – a big plus for me!).

But one thing was consistent with each of these visits to these churches (as well as a visit we had made to North Point several months ago): pretty much the only people we had any amount of conversation with was the person who greeted us at the door, and the people who were taking care of our kids. And in those conversations, we never really got to know them. There was simply no time – we had to get our kids in place, find a seat, and be ready for the “show” to start. It’s kind of like how Amy doesn’t consider going to a movie to be a real “date”. We don’t get to talk much. Was our experience visiting these churches really any different?

The bigger and more successful the church, the worse the problem becomes. So the very things that make a church grow (inspiring sermon and music) also create the problem where you simply won’t get to know anybody when you walk in the door. Is this how we’re supposed to disciple the nations?

So not only had I started to become skeptical of the presentational approach, it’s starting to gnaw at me more, because there’s no time for building relationships…

We’d been wanting to visit some house churches, but it’s kind of hard to find them since they’re not particularly visible and don’t generally have websites. And most of the ones we’re aware of don’t offer any sort of child care, and as I’ve tried to point out to the people I know involved in house churches of that nature, when you hvae a two-year-old and a four-year-old, you’ll understand why you need something different for young kids.

But while searching for churches in Snellville, Amy found a link on a church’s website to a website for a house church that meets in Suwanee on Sunday nights. After looking at the site, and really connecting with the vision that was shared there, we decided to check it out the next evening.

That Sunday night we went to the house church in Suwanee. It was a completely different experience. Rather than sitting, listening and simply singing along, we participated. We got to know everyone else there. They were not satisfied with just asking our names and finding out where we lived. They wanted to hear our story. And we got to learn about their stories. And our stories intersected.

This particular night, there were ten adults in attendance. With a group that size, you have a completely separate dynamic. Nobody is there to see a show – everyone is there to worship and grow. You contribute to the discussion, and see where the Spirit leads. You can get a type of interaction in a group of ten that you could never get in a group of even fifty, much less two thousand.

As a worship leader, it’s quite a different experience to lead worship for ten people that you are getting to know, as opposed to a hundred or more, where you know maybe a couple dozen of them, some more of them, you know their names, and the rest of them are just faces.

You simply can’t walk into and out of a house church anonymously.

We had already been thinking about and considering house churches already. But being involved with this group for the past two months has made it clear to us that this is the direction God has been leading us. As I look back over my own blog, I see that I have been asking questions that are best answered in the context of house church.

Beyond our own experience, there are many reasons why I’m convinced that gathering in house churches is a superior approach. More on that to come – stay tuned.