Sunday, June 6, 2010

A new way of doing "church"

Today I attended HOPE COMMUNITY CHURCH. This is the church that I will be attending all summer with the people who run LifeBuilders. They had told me ahead of time that this church was different than your typical church, but I had heard that before so I didnt think much of it. I was taken back by this church. From the very first step in the door people surrounded me welcoming me and telling me they had been anticipating my arrival. We walked into the sanctuary and sat down. They explained to me that rarely does the service start on time, that was true today. At about 10:10 they began worship. It made me think about how other churches are so focused on time that often times I sense we are putting God in a box and saying he only has this amount of time and then thats it we're cutting him off. How crazy does that sound, but yet its what we do all the time. Once singing was finished the pastor came forward and held a stack of small pieces of paper that had prayer requests written on them. He took the time to read each one and acknowledged the people if they were present and then asked who would be willing to pray for this request. This took probably close to 20 minutes. THEN they actually took the time to pray in small groups for these requests. People came forward and announced ministry opportunities for the summer. I was introduced and everyone gave a wonderful warm welcome. Finally when the pastor got up to preach it was already 11:20, and he was not short winded. People would raise their hand and interrupt him to help make his point more clear and I just see how the whole body was being represented in that church. After the pastor was done with his message he then had questions for his people and we were asked to break into small groups and discuss how we can apply his message into the life of the church and in our own lives. I have never had that happen in our church, that I can remember. I was very impressed. I felt God moving. THEN the service still wasnt over. We took communion. I was so amazing to see all the people flooding toward the front of the church to take of the body and drink of the blood. The church is so diverse. Not only by race, but by age, income, gender everything. It was so cool. I felt overwhelmed and felt even more how God has brought me here to DETROIT to make an impact. The church has asked me to help with their day camp and I have been given permission by LifeBuilders to do so. I will take a bunch of our kids from our neighborhood to the church and help run the program. I am so excited for this opportunity. God is blowing me away by HIS body of believers in Detroit. Praise God!

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